


The Missing Spark

by Island_Hopper



Category: Calvin & Hobbes
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 19:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 39,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5017387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Island_Hopper/pseuds/Island_Hopper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As an adult, Calvin had lived his life on his own terms, following his own rules. Now with the death of his father, he is called back to his childhood home once more to face his demons and reconnect with old friends who have been waiting patiently for his return – even ones that aren’t human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

A fly lazily buzzed somewhere near the window, taking its time in assessing a good landing spot for itself. The dog lying on a red flannel dog bed in the corner watched it just as lazily, panting quietly, but otherwise not moving. A woman sat motionless on the couch, her hands clasped in her lap, legs tightly drawn together, staring at the floor, lost in her thoughts. Time had stopped. Even the sun in the sky couldn’t seem to decide whether or not to glide under the horizon or to stay put, instead seeming content to simply radiate the kind of languid evening twilight that breeds contemplative thoughts about the nature of the world and all who live in it.

Or used to.

The woman on the couch heaved a shaky sigh and gripped the wet Kleenex in her fist tightly. As if bracing herself for a monumental task, she closed her eyes, exhaled slowly, and stood. The dog’s ears perked hopefully. The woman managed a weak laugh.

“Not yet, Apollo,” she told him softly. “Give me a few minutes.”

She treaded soundlessly to the hall bathroom and turned on the faucet, letting the cool water pool in the bottom of the sink. After a moment, she cupped her hands and dipped them into the water, leaned over, and splashed her face repeatedly, as though she could erase both the tears and the sorrow from her face. Grabbing a towel, she held it to her face for a few seconds, then took another deep breath. Apollo stood patiently at her feet, wagging his tail ever so slightly. She gave him a small smile.

“It’s just you and me now, Olly,” she whispered.

The door bell rang suddenly, tearing her from her thoughts. She wiped her face once more with the towel and inhaled deeply. That’s how life was going to be from now on: just a series of deep breaths.

“Coming!” she called as she made her way to the front door. The concerned face of a young woman appeared across the threshold as the woman opened the door.

“Mrs. Haddock, I just heard the news about a half hour ago,” the young woman said, a worried expression playing across her features. “I can understand if you don’t want company right now. But I thought at least you shouldn’t have to go without dinner.”

Abby Haddock smiled as she caught sight of the bundle being offered to her by the young woman in front of her. “Thank you, Susie. Why don’t you come in for a few minutes?”

“I don’t want to interrupt – ”

“It’s fine. I’m not sure I want to be alone right now anyway,” Abby answered as she opened the door enough to let Susie inside. Susie came inside gratefully and both women headed for the kitchen, where Abby took two glasses out of the cupboard and filled them with water. Susie took two plates and silverware out to the kitchen table and laid out the food she’d brought. Neither of them spoke until they were both seated and had served themselves from the roast beef and green beans on the platter.

“The doctors said he wouldn’t have felt a thing,” Abby said quickly, simply needing to tell someone those words, as if to reassure herself as well. “He wouldn’t have even known what was happening.”

“That’s always been such a terrible intersection anyway,” Susie affirmed just as quickly. “People come racing out of those business complexes, and most of them are on their cell phones and aren’t paying attention.”

“It was a delivery truck,” Abby said, stabbing several green beans aggressively with her fork. “The kind that delivers office supplies. It wasn’t entirely the driver’s fault. His brakes were wet from that rain storm this morning and he didn’t realize that he hadn’t allowed them enough time to dry off before leaving for his rounds. It was an accident.” Abby swallowed hard. “It was an accident,” she repeated, tears beginning to prick her eyelids again. “It – It could have happened to anyone, really, David was just in the wrong place at the wrong – at the wrong – ”

Susie laid a hand on Abby’s back as the sobs started again.

“I told him to retire last year when he had the chance, goddammit,” Abby wept, holding her napkin to her face. “I _told_ him. It wasn’t as though we didn’t have _plans,_ Susie. We had things we were going to do. We were going to travel, we were going to learn to scuba dive, he was going to enter some cycling races for over-50’s, we were – we had so many plans. So many things we wanted to do yet.” She buried her face in her hands. “But he didn’t want to leave last year, that goddamn stubborn…” she trailed off, shaking her head. “If it could have happened to anyone, why the hell did it have to happen to _him?”_  

Susie bit her lip, tears also welling up in her eyes. She had grown up in the house next door, after all, and had known Abby and David Haddock, and their son Calvin, her entire life. Even though she couldn’t claim to have been close to David, the suddenness of his passing was enough to skew her universe ever so slightly. “Mrs. Haddock, I’m so sorry. Really, I’m so sorry, I can’t imagine – is…is there anything I can do?”

Abby sniffed, drying her eyes and cheeks with the napkin. “One thing, Susie.”

“What is it?”

“The secretary desk there in the corner. Top drawer. Black address book. Inside you’ll find a little scrap of paper with Calvin’s number. I haven’t…I haven’t talked to him yet. I’ve been in the hospital all day filling out papers, talking to doctors and chaplains, and anyway, I wouldn’t be able to remember that number if my life depended on it.”

Susie found a receipt with “Calvin” scribbled on the back followed by a very long number. Her eyes bulged slightly. “I forgot how long these international telephone numbers are. Where is Calvin these days?”

“Floating somewhere in French Polynesia,” Abby said with a small smile. “His company sent him there about a year ago, and told him to visit every island for a new book about French Polynesia they’re putting together. I know he likes it, because I almost never hear from him. Not that he calls home all that often anyway, but when he hates his assignment, we seem to get more telephone calls from him simply because he needs someone to complain to.”

“He still works for the travel book company, then?” Susie said, sitting down on the edge of the sofa.

“Among other things,” Abby said, beginning to gather the plates up, knowing that neither of them felt much like eating that night. “He still writes for a few political magazines now and then, but it’s hard to stay in the loop when you’re out of the country almost all of the time.”

“Calvin seems to have done all right for himself,” Susie said, gazing once again down at the number.

“I suppose so. But peaking purely as his mother, I wish he’d find something a little more…stable,” Abby said, drying the last of the tears from her eyes. “I haven’t seen him in so long that the only time I see a recent picture of him is whenever he happens to have one taken for something he’s written. But that life seems to suit him, somehow. He always did have a touch of wanderlust in him, always charting off for unknown places, even when he was a kid and he didn’t get any farther than the woods.” She smiled. “We haven’t always gotten along, but I’ve always missed him when he’s been gone.”

“I’ll finish up the dishes and put the food in the fridge if you’d like, Mrs. Haddock.”

“Abby. Call me Abby,” Abby said with a gentle firmness to her voice. “You’re thirty-three, Susie. You have a right to call me by my first name.”

“All right…Abby. And then I’ll be going. I know you’ll want to talk to Calvin alone.”

Abby sighed. “I doubt I’ll hear from him tonight. This is the number for the publisher’s international office somewhere in Tahiti. They’ll get in touch with him, wherever he is. But if I know my son, he’ll be somewhere inaccessible to anyone in their right mind. It might be days before I hear from him.”

Susie smiled and wiped her hands on a napkin. “All the same, I think I’ll get going. Would you like me to check in on you tomorrow?”

“Good Lord, Susie, I’m not going to turn into a little old widow lady quite so soon,” Abby laughed. “I’ll be fine. I’ve got so much to do now, so much to sort out and plan. But I appreciate the offer, and you’re welcome anytime.”  She shifted a little uncomfortably. “How is your mother, Susie? I’m so sorry I haven’t been over to visit lately.”

“She’s…doing as well as can be expected, thank you,” Susie said with a slightly strained look on her face. Her mother had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when Susie was in high school, and had been in a steadily declining state of health ever since. The disease had begun to advance rapidly in the past few years for a reason the doctors couldn’t fathom, and it had reached a point two years ago when Susie, an only child, had been faced with the decision to either put her mother in a nursing home at the ripe old age of 58 or to care for her at home. Susie had picked the only option she felt she could live with: she left her lucrative psychology practice and moved home to care for her mother until the bitter end. Which, unfortunately, seemed as though it would be sooner rather than later.

Soon, Calvin wouldn’t be the only one missing a parent.

Susie shook herself from her reverie and smiled at Abby. “Well, if you need anything, you know where I am. Stop by or give me a call.”

“I can’t thank you enough, Susie,” Abby said as she embraced the woman who had, in the past two years, become a close friend. “Let’s have coffee later this week, all right?”

“Sounds great. And remember, please don’t hesitate to call anytime, all right?”

“Sure.”

A few moments after Susie left, Abby sat down on the sofa next to the phone and stared at Calvin’s number on the back of the receipt. She tried to come up with something to say to him when she finally got ahold of him, but she couldn’t find any words. How do you tell your son that his father is dead? How do you lessen that blow? Even though Calvin hadn’t seen his father in close to five years, it was still his father, wasn’t it? They had had many spectacular falling-outs over the years, but a son only has one father; how do you tell him that his one father is gone, and never coming back?

Abby sighed and picked up the phone, praying that the words would come more easily, more naturally, if she heard her son’s voice on the other end of the line. It was time to call Calvin home from the outdoors one more time.

 


	2. Chapter 2

He had almost forgotten what a pain in the ass international travel could be.

A tall man sporting shaggy blond hair, a dirty t-shirt, ripped jeans, flip flops, and a deep tan which spoke of countless days in the sun stood patiently in a long line somewhere in a Hawaii airport, gripping a custom declarations form in his right hand and the last bag of airline pretzels in his left, straining to see above the heads of the other people in the customs line and wondering if he’d spend the rest of life his waiting to get his passport stamped. It hadn’t sunk in yet that he was technically on American soil again for the first time in God knew how long, although Hawaii didn’t resemble the continental United States in really any way, shape, or form; McDonalds on street corners and American music blasting from car radios didn’t count, as this wasn’t entirely unusual in many other countries he’d been to around the world.

After what seemed like years, the man arrived in front of a sour-faced customs official who glanced at his passport, his ID, and his customs declaration form.

“You’re Calvin Haddock?”

“That’s me.”

“What is your ultimate destination?”

“Seeing as how commercial space travel is not yet available to the masses, I’m settling for Connecticut.”

“Is your stay for business or pleasure?”

“Hard to say. I’m going for my father’s funeral.”

“Are you carrying contraband?”

Calvin cocked his head. “If it was contraband, what would be the point of telling a customs official? Wouldn’t it then cease to be contraband?”

The officer looked up at Calvin with a deadpan look on his face. “Can I see your bag, sir?”

Calvin shook the bag free from his back and laid it on the inspection table. The officer poked through its contents: a book ( _The Road to Wigan Pier_ by George Orwell), a blue spiral bound notebook (full of notes and observations about his last visit to Bora Bora), a few pens, a half-eaten Snickers bar, an unused condom, a few CDs ( _The Jimi Hendrix Experience,_ The Beatles’ _White Album,_ a mix CD of traditional Tahitian music given to him by a heartbroken girl he’d left in Papeete months ago), and his visa information. The officer gave Calvin a long look before sliding the bag back towards him. He then glanced through Calvin’s Port of Entry form, stamped his passport, and waved him through.

“Pity,” Calvin muttered to himself as he walked through the airport to find his gate for the flight to San Francisco. “Always hoped I looked a little more dangerous than that.”

His next flight wasn’t for another hour, so Calvin sat in an airport bar, having a cheeseburger and a beer, watching cable news on a TV above him. It didn’t take more than a few moments before he remembered why he used to intentionally stay away from the news; he had a feeling that half of it wasn’t correct, and that the other half was skewed to whatever bias the reporter held. This cynicism had been nurtured from years of working in and around that arena as a freelance writer and correspondent.

His childhood as a lonely but lippy kid had actually begun to serve him well once he hit high school. He had the vocabulary of someone three times his age and had almost as far back as he could remember. He’d also met very few people with verbal sparring skills as sharp as his were. After a particularly vitriolic argument with an English teacher his freshman year over the possibility that Shakespeare had not been the author of all of the plays accredited him (Calvin arguing that Shakespeare had, at the very least, borrowed liberally from other obscure authors and myths from earlier times, his teacher arguing that if Shakespeare were guilty of such a thing, he had at least transformed the stories into something unrecognizable to the original source), the teacher had asked him to stay after class and encouraged him to join the debate team at the school. Calvin, never one for anything that required him to stay at the school any longer than he absolutely had to, refused. But when his report card was issued, Calvin found himself having a very serious discussion with his guidance counselor, who basically told him that in order to salvage his grades, he needed at least one extra-curricular activity on his record. Grudgingly, Calvin found himself attending a debate club meeting, and apathetically accepting a challenge to debate the merits of banning beauty advertisements in magazines for teenagers.

However, over the next several months, he surprised himself by beginning to enjoy engaging other debate team members in thoughtful, if heated, discussions. He found himself spending long hours in the library researching his debate topics, and poring first over the principles of Platonic Rhetoric (which he later rejected as being the tool of crooks and swindlers), then later embracing Aristotelian Rhetoric (which he found much more to his taste). Soon he found that he no longer cared if he was seen in public reading books or being labeled a bookworm; books were the chronicles of humanity, transferring information and experience from age to age, and by the end of his freshman year he was rarely seen without a book in his hand and a new idea fermenting in his mind, which he would share with whoever would listen. People began to take notice of the gangly kid with wild yellow hair and interesting ideas on anything from politics to culinary arts. For the first time in his life, Calvin began to have a wide circle of friends.

By the time he was a junior, he was working on the school newspaper as a columnist, writing scathing articles on the nutritional value of their school lunches or critiques on school curriculum. Topics where others feared to tread were pounced on by Calvin, who never feared school administrators or academic punishment; he had a burning need for the truth to be freely available, no matter how disturbing that truth was. Near the end of his junior year, he found himself in front of the school board standing next to the newspaper editor; the board demanded to know why an expose on the number of teenage pregnancies and the rate of STDs (an article furiously researched and written by Calvin, and approved by the editor for publication) had been allowed to run in the school paper. Calvin argued for close to an hour that the article was meant not as a shock piece, but rather a call for better sex education and more widely available contraception. He pointed out, rightly, that the reason the school board had such a problem with the piece was that the article was the _unvarnished truth,_ an ugly reality, one that they must confront head on, and that the school board was failing the students by refusing to recognize the reality in which the students lived. The meeting was well attended by students supporting Calvin as well as parents angered by the article, and by the end of Calvin’s remarkable speech, nearly everyone in the audience stood and cheered. Nevertheless, Calvin and the editor were given a three day out of school suspension. Normally, an out of school suspension would result in zeros for all assignments missed during that time; but in each of his classes, his teachers cornered him and secretly passed on the assignments to him. It was their unspoken support for Calvin’s cause. It was then that Calvin knew that journalism was where he needed to spend his life.

Calvin scoffed quietly to himself and reached for the bottle of ketchup on the bartop in front of him. Pouring the ketchup liberally on his fries, he had to wonder if that fateful choice made so long ago had been the right one. Second guessing oneself is a fairly typical human conundrum, but it didn’t make the thoughts any easier to bear. He crunched thoughtfully on a fry, letting his mind wander through his past.

He was made the editor of the school paper his senior year of high school and won several prestigious journalism awards for high school students for articles he wrote that year. The school paper, too, was nationally recognized as an outstanding high school publication that year for the first time in the school’s history. He was offered a partial journalism scholarship to a well-respected university on the East Coast and started in the fall after high school graduation. Calvin tried on many new identities throughout the first two years of his college career; he went through his communist phase, his socialist phase, even a short Ayn Rand phase. He argued for euthanasia one semester and against it another. He tried every illegal drug that crossed his path, and argued for their decriminalization one year and against it the next. He slept with honor roll students and with students who barely ever showed up to classes. His sophomore year he began to date a girl whom he quickly fell for, for the first time in his life. She and Calvin started a magazine on campus that dealt with student issues of the day, and nothing was off-limits. They worked night and day on the publication, which quickly became an underground success on campus, and swore their undying love for one another and for the causes they wrote so passionately about.

The day after his twentieth birthday, Calvin calmly smoked a cigarette as he made his way back to his off-campus apartment, unlocking the front door and throwing his bookbag in the corner as he always did. He entered the bedroom, meaning to take a shower, and dropped his burning cigarette on the carpet as he found his girlfriend, his first love, in bed with his best friend and co-editor of the magazine. A wild scene ensued, with a fistfight between he and his best friend, which resulted in the neighbors calling the police, who hauled both of them off. Calvin spent the night in jail nursing a black eye, a sore jaw, and a severely bruised ago. He moved out of the apartment the next day. He refused to pay his girlfriend for the damage done to her apartment for the cigarette burn on the carpet and, as young males are wont to do, blamed the entire episode on the fact that his university was bullshit and promptly dropped out, much to his parents’ chagrin.

“You want anudder one?” the bartender asked, appearing out of nowhere and making Calvin jump in his seat slightly. He looked at the stout bartender confusedly for a moment, before he realized his glass of beer was empty.

Calvin glanced at his watch and shrugged. “Why not?” he muttered. Flights never left on time out of this airport anyway. He spun the salt shaker around, chewing on the memories of that day. What would his life have been like if he hadn’t left school? Certainly his parents would have been happier to have a college-educated son, whom they could brag about to their friends, rather than hemming and hawing when someone asked what “that boy Calvin” had decided to do with his life.

He’d taken the first freelance writing gig he could find after he dropped out of college: a social column editor for a Los Angeles alternative newspaper. It didn’t pay enough to keep his head above water, so Calvin would often forgo sleep in order to write articles for other magazines and newspapers in order to earn enough money to pay the rent on his squalid studio apartment near the heart of the city. After six months, he’d had it with the insipid parties and meaningless gossip he was more or less forced to pay attention to for the sake of his column. As was to become a recurring theme in his life, his decision to leave was sudden, influenced by a shock, and his choice made in a flash of upset. That night he’d run into a friend from college, one who’d taken a summer internship at a prominent LA newspaper, at a party. After telling his friend what he now did for a living, the friend had laughed right in his face, and openly wondered what had happened to Calvin’s sense of self that he’d taken such a demeaning position. That was the final straw. He sold his car for half of what it was worth the next morning at a local car dealership, donated all of his personal items he couldn’t fit in two bags, and bought a one-way ticket to New Zealand, for the simple fact that he could pay cash for the ticket and it was the next flight out of LA.

The years went quickly after that. Calvin wrote for whoever would hire him, whether it was for tourist publications, newspapers, current events magazines, or anything else that would pay quickly for something he could crank out in a night or two. He never stayed in once place for too long, never got too attached to anyone he met, and he no longer looked at his writing as a way to express himself or to make sense of the world around him – it now simply became a way to keep a roof over his head and food in his belly. Visits to his parents’ home in Connecticut became more and more rare as the years went by. Calvin had never gotten along particularly well with his parents, especially his father. They seemed to have come from two completely different worlds, though one had raised the other. David Haddock had never understood Calvin’s gypsified lifestyle and Calvin had never understood his subdued suburban one. They disagreed about everything, whether it was politics, women, or even what to watch on television. Many an uneasy truce had been struck over the years, but they never lasted long; one would begin sniping at the other one about something, and the whole cycle would continue.

Calvin took a sip of his beer and tried to remember the last time he’d seen his father. It had been about five years ago, he guessed, the last time he’d been in Connecticut. He’d decided to come home for Christmas that year, more or less because he didn’t have any pressing assignments due and because his parents had been politely prodding him about coming home again (“It’s been three years since your last visit,” his mother had told him over the phone, “Our friends and neighbors all wonder why we never see you.”). He’d been in France at the time, though now he couldn’t recall why, and had gotten home three days before Christmas. His father had gripped him warmly by the hand when he got home and his mother had embraced him, but they were both appalled by the ratty luggage he carried and by his scraggly hair and beard. He’d laughed and promised to get a shave and haircut the next day if any places were open, and the evening went smoothly.

The next day, however, was not so peaceful. David had risen early, like he normally did, for a brisk walk up to the hill which overlooked their town to watch the sun rise. He’d shaken Calvin awake to ask if his son wanted to join him, but Calvin had been asleep all of two hours (due to both the jet lag and the fact that Calvin had never been an early riser anyway) and gave him a grumpy “no.” At breakfast later that morning, David had sighed that Calvin had already missed the best part of the day and that he’d been under the _impression_ that his _only son_ had come home to spend some quality time with his folks. Calvin had snapped that he was under the _impression_ that wasn’t entirely unheard of to engage in activities during the daylight hours and that perhaps _his father_ was the strange one for getting up in the middle of the night to struggle up a hill to see something that happened every morning regardless, even when it wasn’t in the middle of a Connecticut winter.

Calvin shook his head slowly. Old grievances and spats didn’t seem to mean anything in the face of what his mother had told him in a phone call two days ago. He had listened quietly to her, and hadn’t said more than a few words after she told him the news. After hanging up the phone in the American embassy on Tahiti he’d gone to in order to call his mother (due to the fact that he’d always refused to get a cell phone, never having liked the idea that anyone from the States could reach him whenever they felt like it), he’d thanked the man behind the desk, walked down the stairs and out onto the street, collapsed onto a bench, and began shaking. The tears still hadn’t come and he wasn’t sure if they would, but he’d sat on that bench in Tahiti for close to an hour before his mind cleared enough to begin to plot out a rational course of action on how to get home. Nothing ever happened quickly in that part of the world, and thus two days later he had only just landed on American soil and his journey was not even half over.

Calvin slapped a twenty on the bar top, grabbed his bag, and made his way towards his gate where the boarding call had just sounded. The flight would take him as far as Chicago, where he would need to change planes once more to get to Hartford, Connecticut, where his mother would be waiting for him. As he stood in line to board, he idly wondered whether she would pick him up in the sedan or the SUV. Suddenly startled, he remembered that the sedan was the one his father had been driving when the accident occurred. Unbidden, memories of every detail of the car flooded his mind as well as memories of buying the car with Dad. David had bought the car when Calvin was home the last time, dragging him along to the car lot with him, making him sit in on test drives of at least five different cars, and then hours inside the dealership until David and the car dealer had come up with a deal they could both live with. Calvin remembered being annoyed that he’d essentially been forced to waste an entire day doing something that no one enjoyed doing, and he’d hated the color of the car anyway, a dark mauve with silver trim that Calvin felt made the car look like it was trying desperately to appear more expensive than it actually was. He dug his boarding pass out of his jeans; why in the hell did his brain retain such useless information? Such minutiae? Being able to remember everything about the car, knowing his father had died in it, made the memories nearly unbearable. He handed over his boarding pass to the pretty airport staff member, stalked down the long walkway, shoved his bag under his seat, and promptly fell asleep, not wanting to think anymore about the accident.

 

__________________________________

 

Many hours later, Calvin emerged from gate 3B in the Bradley International Airport and made his way towards the baggage carousel, where Abby had promised to meet him. He was surprised at his nervousness; this was his mother, after all, even if he hadn’t seen her in five years. As he rounded the bend towards the baggage carousel, his heart skipped a beat.

Abby stood with a light jacket in her hands, hair tucked back, looking around hopefully for a familiar and much missed face. The tear stains on her cheeks sustained on the car ride to the airport had been hastily removed in the airport bathroom moments earlier, and she hoped that no tell tale signs remained. She wasn’t sure how Calvin was coping with or reacting to the death of his father, and wanted to appear strong for him in case he was falling apart, as she felt _she_ was inside.

“Mom?” a voice called softly behind her.

She turned and a smile crept onto her face. “Hi Calvin,” she answered, just as softly, wrapping her arms around her son, her beautiful, wonderful, precious son. She hugged him tightly, not letting go, burying her face in her shoulder, Calvin now being almost a foot taller than her. “Oh Calvin, I’m so sorry, honey…” she whispered, running her hand through the hair on the back of his head. “I’m sorry, honey.”

“It’ll be all right, Mom,” Calvin whispered back to her, also holding on tightly, having forgotten how good it felt to be hugged by one’s mother.

They embraced for what seemed like hours before Abby let go and wiped away a few tears that had formed in her eyes. “Get your bags,” she commanded gently, as though Calvin were a little boy again. “I’ll let you drive home.”

They rode back to the house just as darkness crept over the horizon. The ride took a good hour, wherein the only words breaking up the soft classical music playing in the background were a few pleasantries and small talk. She asked how his flight was; he asked how her spring garden was coming. When they arrived home, Calvin sat in the car a moment, looking up at the house where he’d grown up, and got out of the car slowly, slinging his backpack over his shoulder and wrapping his fist around the duffel bag he’d brought and followed his mother inside.

Abby seemed to sense that Calvin would need a moment to let the atmosphere of his old home soak in. In fact, Calvin thought to himself as he stood in the foyer, it was really the only real home he’d ever known. No where that he’d ever lived on his own had ever come close.

“Hi Abby, I – ” Susie rounded the corner, wiping her hands off on a dishtowel, having just cut some vegetables and put them in a pot to cook. She stopped when she saw Calvin standing in front of her, and Calvin did the same.

“Hi Susie. Calvin, I hope you don’t mind, but I asked Susie to come over for dinner,” Abby said, putting her coat in the closet.

“Susie, hi,” Calvin sputtered in surprise, awkwardly holding out a hand to shake. “I haven’t seen you in…well, what, since college?”

“Over a decade at least, I’d say,” Susie said in response, shaking his hand as though they’d never met. She looked him over carefully; he’d changed a lot since those days. He was taller and broader in the shoulders. His blond hair was a little shorter than it had been in college, but it still stuck up in odd places like it always had. For his part, Calvin looked over his former neighbor as well. She looked…grown up. Mature. Her dark brown hair hung almost to her shoulders and her figure was still on the slim side. He gave her a small smile.

“Shall we all go in and catch up?” Abby suggested, leading them to the living room.

For the next hour until dinner was ready, the three caught up as best they could considering it had been so long since they’d all seen each other. Calvin heard about Susie’s mother, and how Susie had come home to take care of her two years ago. Calvin told them about some of his recent assignments and spoke about the new travel book with his articles that would be published soon. Susie could tell he was holding back, not wholly comfortable in being entirely himself, and wished he would open up a little more – didn’t he realize that he was home, and home was always the one place you were allowed to truly be yourself?

After dinner, Calvin saw Susie to the door, both promised to spend some more time together before Calvin left again, and then helped his mother wash up in the kitchen.

“You’re not acting like yourself,” Abby observed as she handed him a plate to dry.

“What do you mean?” Calvin asked, though he sounded entirely uninterested.

“I know that…what happened to Dad was a shock. But it’s ok to grieve, Calvin. It’s natural, and necessary. It’s ok to say you’ll miss him,” Abby pointed out gently.

Calvin shoved a plate back in the cupboard aggressively. “Well, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to lay on the floor kicking and screaming?”

“No. But you don’t have to act like nothing’s wrong. You don’t have to act like you’re ok with all of this.”

“Then why should I be acting like myself?”

“Because usually you never stop talking. I know we didn’t get much time to talk on the phone, but it’s ok to talk now. In fact, I _want_ to talk about it,” she said quietly. “You and I were the ones who knew him best. I just…want to grieve with someone who loved him as much as I did.” She put the back of her hand to her mouth, feeling the tears coming again. Calvin shot her an impatient look.

“You know Dad and I never got along,” Calvin said quietly.

“But it doesn’t mean you won’t miss him,” she responded.

“I’m getting pretty sick of what people telling me what I _should_ feel,” Calvin muttered, grabbing another dirty plate and washing it hastily in the sink. He knew he should comfort his mother, wrap his arms around her, let her cry. He knew _he_ should be crying. But somehow, the tears weren’t coming. Nothing was. He felt empty. “Mom, you know that I’m not the greatest guy in the world, all right? Hell, Dad told me as much on more occasions than I can remember.”

“Just tell me how you’re feeling,” she pleaded gently.

He looked at her blankly for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I’ve got no idea how I feel.”

Abby looked as though he’d broken her heart, but nodded. “All right,” she said softly. “Ok, Calvin.”

Calvin rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m…I’m going to go unpack, then I guess I’ll turn in. I’ve been in airports and on planes for the last two days.”

“All right,” Abby repeated, picking up the sponge and wringing it out, not looking at her son.

“I’ll…I’ll get up early and let Apollo out,” Calvin promised, not sure what else he could say. “Then we can go to the funeral home.”

“All right.”

Calvin turned to leave but suddenly turned back around. “Mom?” he asked. She turned to look at him, her eyes red. He searched for words, but he, the king of talk, came up empty. He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Good night,” he offered finally, and left his mother. Closing the guest bedroom door softly behind him, he exhaled slowly, looking up at the ceiling. _What am I going to do?_ he thought to himself. _What now?_


	3. Chapter 3

Calvin stepped out onto the back patio, shutting the door softly behind him. His mother had gone to bed an hour ago and the book he’d been trying to lose himself in had lain open and unread on his lap for forty-five minutes before he had given up and decided to slip outside for a sneaky smoke. He shook the small red and white pack, grabbed the end of a smoke with his lips, flipped his lighter open, and inhaled deeply. Jesus, he’d needed that shot of nicotine after the day he’d had.

The graveside service had lasted less than a half hour, with an ancient priest huddled in front of the open grave with his back to the wind, warbling almost incomprehensively above the noise of the strong gusts of wind. Calvin and his mother had listened dutifully until the sermon was over, thrown a fistful of dirt on the coffin, said their final silent goodbyes, and watched emotionlessly as David was laid in his final resting spot. Calvin had clenched his teeth and looked up at the clouds which were becoming increasingly ominous, and wondered why in the hell such rituals, designed to provide order in the midst of chaos, never eased aching hearts or a guilty conscious. At a funeral, no one felt comfortable doing whatever it was they felt they needed to do to adequately express the feeling of loss inside all of them. No one threw themselves on the coffin weeping uncontrollably. No one screamed at the top of their lungs that they were sorry, or weren’t sorry. No one got falling-down drunk just so they wouldn’t have to think for a few hours, no one slugged the relatives they didn’t feel had any right to be there, no one told the priest to just-fucking-forget-it because empty words weren’t doing anyone a damn bit of good.

The ride home had been hushed, with only a few quiet words spoken between them. Calvin drove and inwardly marveled at the changes in the small city where he’d grown up. New and cheerful supermarkets and bookstores adorned what used to be farmer’s fields, the old stores where Calvin had bought comic books with his allowance money years ago had been torn down to make room for day spas and hair salons, and the town library had become a _city_ library, built up and built out, so much so that it was unrecognizable to him.

After they’d gotten home, Calvin had leashed up Apollo with the excuse that the dog needed a good long walk, the kind he hadn’t gotten since David had died, and took him out into the woods where it seemed Calvin had spent his entire boyhood exploring, climbing, racing, fishing, and generally making a mess of himself before he went home again. He and Apollo ventured past the outlaying trees visible from the house and deeper into the forest. On the rare occasion that Calvin thought of home while he was thousands of miles away, it was always these woods that came to mind first. As he brushed past branches and bushes, Calvin smiled for the first time that day, always having felt more comfortable alone and in the presence of brambly, untamed nature, whatever form it might take, where ever in the world he was.

As he and the dog broke through a large copse of trees that had almost formed a wall in the woods, and which Calvin didn’t remember being there before, he cursed silently at the thorns scraping against his bare skin. He stopped, stunned, once they’d cleared the thicket. Instead of the clearing with the creek running through the grassy fields filled with butterflies and flowers, Calvin found himself staring at a new subdivision full of bright, smart looking homes, squared off separately from one another, with minivans and expensive SUVs sitting in large concrete driveways, a wide street running through the center, and impressive looking streetlights dotting the curbs. Men with generous waistlines and dressed in khakis and polo shirts tended barbeque grills on their back decks while children played in sprinklers or in the pools some of the houses sported in their backyards. A few older children were mowing the lawns of a few of the houses, while others were washing the cars in the driveways. The creek, still flowing as it used to, looked tamer, less wild, with carefully tended plants on its banks, and even a few faux-wood stepping bridges for crossing.

It was a bustling goddamned neighborhood built on the former site of _his_ woods, _his_ creek, _his_ fields. This place was _his –_ he’d played here, fallen down and bled here, gotten covered in mud and grass stains here, built forts and mounds and small, childlike irrigation systems and snowmen here, built entire universes of his own here – it was _his._ He had to restrain himself from marching down into one of the backyards and _demanding_ to know who the hell all these people were and why they were invading _his_ territory.

Instead, he bit his lip, turned around, broke back through the thicket, and trudged home. He never wanted to see that place again.

All in all, he had just really needed a cigarette.

Shaking himself from the memory as he stood on the patio in the darkness, Calvin smirked; he hated clichés, but at least one of them was true: you couldn’t go home again. Not really. He’d made the same mistake everyone does in thinking that _home_ is static and unchanging, that once you leave, life there never really goes on without you. Calvin laughed darkly and shook his head, flicking some ash from the end of his cigarette, lost in his thoughts. Dad had always hated it when Calvin smoked on the patio, or anywhere else for that matter. Perhaps the habit had started as an act of rebellion because David had been such a fitness nut. He turned the cigarette package over and over in his hands, studying the small box intently. He shrugged to himself; not that it mattered, anymore.

The sound of something creaking next door made Calvin jump straight up. Looking into the Derkins’ backyard, he saw a lithe figure in the dark waving at him sheepishly.

“Susie?” Calvin asked quietly, not wanting to wake his mother.

“Hi Calvin,” she called back softly. “Did I scare you?” Not waiting for an answer, she grabbed what looked like an aerosol can of something and began spraying it on a tall object in front of her. “Sorry about that. If I don’t put some WD40 on this tripod every few days, it starts squeaking. Usually no one’s outside this time of night.”

Curiosity piqued, Calvin strode through his yard until he was nearly on Susie’s back porch. “What’ve you got there? A telescope?”

“It is,” Susie answered demurely, but obviously quite proud of the monstrosity in front of her.

Calvin whistled, feigning astonishment, knowing perhaps that’s what she wanted. “Never seen one that big in someone’s backyard before.”

“Yep. This is my baby,” Susie said, stroking the telescope lovingly. “I used to have a room on the top floor in my house that was an observatory. It was an old widow’s peak, perfect for stargazing. It was the whole reason I bought the house. Every night for about an hour before I went to bed, I’d watch the stars. It’s the one habit I haven’t been able to give up here.”

Calvin touched it gingerly. “Bet you can see to the ends of the universe with this thing.”

“Farther than that,” Susie boasted without thinking. She immediately turned red and fiddled with her hands. “Well. What I mean is, it’s a pretty good ‘scope.”

Calvin smiled at her shyness. “So how many flying saucers have you discovered with this old tin can, Derkins?”

Susie laughed and looked away, hands in front of her diffidently, and shrugged somewhat bashfully. “No aliens yet. But I did discover a comet two years ago.”

Calvin plopped down on the edge of her porch, swinging his legs over the side, and lit another cigarette. “Figures that Susie Derkins would discover the tool of our demise,” he teased.

Susie sat down next to him. “It’s hundreds of millions of miles away. I think we’re safe.”

“Did you get to name it?”

“I named it Gretchen.” Calvin threw her an amused but questioning glance. She smiled. “It’s my cat’s name.”

Calvin took a drag of his cigarette and looked upwards with Susie in silence for a few moments. “Strange to be back, isn’t it?” she said quietly, more a statement than a question.

He nodded. “I suppose so.”

“It was a shock to me too, when I came back a couple of years ago,” Susie murmured. “I remember thinking that nothing had changed, except everything. Like the same words but in a different order.” She looked down at her hands. “I’m sorry about your father, Calvin. I really am. He was a good man, at heart.”

Calvin was quiet for a moment. “I suppose so,” he said again. Susie turned to him in the darkness.

“You ‘suppose so’?”

Calvin spread his hands out on his lap. They were exactly like his father’s hands and perhaps the only thing of his father he’d ever seen reflected in himself; a physical vestige, and that was all. “We…didn’t have much in common.”

“You’re right. But you loved him, didn’t you? I know you’ll miss him.”

Calvin sighed. “Maybe. I don’t know. Too soon to tell.”

Susie shook her head. “I don’t know how you can say that.”

“Look, you didn’t know my father as well as I did,” Calvin snapped. “The man and I didn’t see anything of each other in ourselves. We were complete opposites. Whatever he believed, I believed the opposite. Whatever he did, I did the opposite. He went to law school, graduated, got a good paying job, bought a house, got married, had a kid. I dropped out of college, traveled the world, drank too much, wrote a lot, never had a serious relationship in my life, terrified of a mortgage, didn’t want anything to do with a normal life. It’s still amazing to me that we were even related. If we’d been perfect strangers, we couldn’t have been more different. He never understood me and I never understood him. I loved him, but I didn’t particularly like him. And I’m pretty sure he felt the same about me.”

“All I’m saying is that I’m sorry he’s gone. I’m sorry it happened. I’m sorry you and your mom have to go through it.”  

Calvin took another drag from his cigarette. “It’s just life, Susie. That’s all it is. Shit happens in life. You can’t see it coming. You can’t anticipate it and you can’t prepare for it. It just happens.”

“It probably doesn’t make you feel any better, though.”

“Well, I never did believe in fate,” Calvin said with a small smile. “Never believed that there was a plan or an order. Never believed things happen for a reason. Never saw anything that made me believe otherwise.”

“You’ve seen plenty, haven’t you?”

Calvin paused for a moment. “Yeah,” he answered finally. “I’ve seen plenty.”

“I envy you that,” Susie admitted softly. She placed her hands under her legs, looking out at the stars once more. “My life was always so planned out. There was always some path to follow. Some concrete direction in which I was headed. I would make a decision, and that was that. I would stick with it to the bloody end. I decided when I was seventeen that I was going to be a psychologist and that’s what I did. Spent my early to mid-twenties studying just so I could earn the letters ‘PhD’ behind my name and a few degrees from Ivy League universities to hang on my wall in my late twenties. Sat in a gilded office and listened to affluent professionals tell me their hopes and their fears, or describing their goals and why they didn’t think they could meet them, or their secrets they couldn’t tell anyone else. I got up each morning, went to work, spent the evening doing paperwork, went home and read journals of psychiatry and medicine, looked through my telescope, then went to bed. I did that every day for five years.”

“Jesus,” Calvin said, stunned, with a cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth. He couldn’t imagine such an ordered existence.

She smiled. “I summed up my life since I last saw you in twenty seconds. I bet it would take you days to sum up yours.” Her smile turned bittersweet. “That was always the difference between you and me, Calvin. When you woke up in the morning, you never knew where the evening would find you. Each day was a new possibility. It was never that way for me.”

“If it was that bad, why didn’t you do something about it?”

“I didn’t hate it. Not at all. In fact I loved every minute of it. In fact, I…in fact, I miss it terribly.”

Calvin studied her for a moment, then gazed at the Derkins’ house. It dawned on him that she hadn’t been speaking about a life she regretted; she’d been speaking about one she _missed._ Her childhood home had become her prison. He rubbed the back of his neck, a nervous tick he’d had since he was a teenager. “Nothing lasts forever, Susie. Someday you’ll just pick up right where you left off.”

“But that would mean that Mother was dea – ” Susie stopped there, unable to finish her thought. She swallowed a sob, feeling tears beginning to prick her eyes, and forced herself to smile. She pointed to a copse of woods beyond their respective backyards. “I remember you and Hobbes used to come tearing out of those woods being followed by a swarm of bees at least twice a summer, screaming your head off. Your mom would run outside and douse you with the hose, then put ointment on all the stings you’d gotten. Then you’d swear revenge on the bees and come up with all sorts of hare-brained schemes to get back at the bees, like smearing their hive in peanut butter so they couldn’t get in.” She laughed softly at the memory. “And that usually led you to come screaming out of the woods followed by angry bees once again shortly thereafter.”

Calvin found himself laughing. “I don’t take credit for that. That was Hobbes’ idea, not mine.” He stopped for a moment. “Christ. Hobbes. Haven’t thought of him in years.”

“Really?” Susie asked, surprised. “You two were inseparable until you were almost eleven.”

“We were best friends,” Calvin said simply, with a shrug. “But hell, I outgrew it.” A little pang pierced his heart at this statement, surprising him, but he shook it off. “I mean, can you imagine if I’d started middle school still believing in an imaginary friend?”

“You’d be surprised,” Susie answered. “Imaginary friends among adults are more common than you think. Some cultures believed that those who had imaginary friends were blessed with a special sight, a third eye if you will, and that such things were sacred, not something to be embarrassed by.”

“I don’t think our culture is one of them,” Calvin said, cocking an eyebrow.

“Maybe not,” Susie said with a small shrug. “But you’d be amazed to learn how many high-powered executives have imaginary friends. Believe me. I heard it often enough from my patients that it ceased being strange to me.” She smiled at him. “I’ve read plenty of scientific studies that claim children with imaginary friends develop powerful language and conversation skills, precisely because they get so much practice from their imaginary friends. And as I recall, you had quite a vocabulary and conversation skills when you were a kid.” She shifted a little, a bit of the psychologist coming back to her. “Did you know he wasn’t real, Calvin?”

“What do you mean?” Calvin said in a slightly brusque tone. “Hobbes was as real as you were. As real as Mom and Dad. I could hear his voice as well as I can hear you now.”

“When did it…when did it stop?”

“When did it stop?” Calvin repeated. He began to fidget; why in the hell was he suddenly so anxious? “When did he stop coming alive, you mean?”

“Yes. When did he stop…talking? Playing?”

Calvin looked her over critically. “When you were a psychologist, how much did you charge an hour?”

Susie shot him a look. “Plenty,” she replied.

“And I’m getting it for free?”

“Call it professional withdrawal.”

The moonlight caught her face for an instant, and it struck Calvin fully that she was an adult. _He_ was also an adult. A man and a woman. Sitting together in the darkness. Something stirred in him and suddenly he didn’t want to talk about a stuffed tiger anymore. He nodded towards her telescope. “How about you show me that comet of yours, eh?”

Susie shook her head. “All right, Calvin. I get it. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“No, really. I’m interested. Show me Gretel the Comet.”

“Gretchen.”

“Gretchen. Right.”

“You won’t be able to see it now.”

Calvin stared down at Susie’s face for a moment and smiled. Being back home might not be such a bad thing after all. It had been a while since he’d been with a woman, now that he thought about it. Two, three months at least. And despite his ardent protests to the contrary, during high school, he couldn’t help but watch Susie in her bedroom from his bedroom window at night as she was getting ready for bed, and carefully consider what exactly might be under those soft cotton nightgowns she wore.

“I’ve got a few things to do tomorrow,” Calvin said. “But how about afterwards we go out for a few drinks? Maybe a stroll around town?”  

Susie studied him for a long moment before conceding, “Well…I suppose that should be fine. Aunt Minda comes every Wednesday night, to give me a break. Normally I go to the bookstore or to the movies, but…well, I guess an evening out wouldn’t hurt.”

Calvin gave her a wan smile and stood up. “Great. See you then.”

With that, Calvin jogged back to his house and slipped through the back door. Susie watched him go, then stood up and fumbled her way in the darkness back to her telescope to resume her nightly activity. As she gazed heavenward, she couldn’t help but wonder what kind of a man Calvin had grown up to be, and it was with a sort of morbid curiosity that she looked forward to the next evening.


	4. Chapter 4

 

After Calvin had dropped out of college and began his seemingly never-ending jaunt around the world, his mother had taken the liberty (half out of the need for a sewing and craft room, and half out of resentment) of converting Calvin’s old bedroom into a space she could utilize for her own projects. Since she could count on one hand the number of times he’d been home since then, she didn’t feel that she’d been out of order with this line of reasoning, and Calvin had always deigned to sleep in the guest room at his old home on the rare occasion he was there. This visit was no different, and though he’d been home for a grand total of two nights, the guest room already looked like a bomb had exploded inside of it. Books, notebooks filled with Calvin’s scribbling, visa and passport information, clothes and shoes littered the surfaces and the floor of the room. Abby had already decided that since Calvin was a grown man, he could damn well pick up after himself and refused to do any of his tidying. Naturally, Calvin had never cared one way or another what his room looked like, either here at home in Connecticut or anywhere else in the world he’d ever lived. Thus, an uneasy truce had been struck: Calvin didn’t pick up after himself, and Abby refused to enter the room.

“I cleaned out the attic this spring and left some of your old things in the guest room closet,” Abby said as she packed up the last of David’s clothes into garbage bags for taking to the Goodwill. Wet tissues scattered the surface of the master bed where she and Calvin had worked through the afternoon cleaning out David’s closet of his clothes and shoes. It had been a difficult afternoon and had left her emotionally drained. Something about seeing and touching the clothes her husband had worn every day had gutted her, and she wondered aloud several times whether they should be doing this yet. Calvin had been uncharacteristically gentle with her, and reminded her that it would be easier in the long run to do these things now, rather than waiting until later. “I suggest you go through those boxes I left for you in there. They’re marked ‘Calvin’s Things.’ Whatever you don’t want you can take to the Goodwill with this lot, and take with you whatever you want to keep.”

“All right, Mom,” Calvin answered dutifully, hulking three trash bags of clothes over his shoulder to take out to the car. “I’ll do it before I go out tonight so that I can just take everything to be donated tomorrow.”

“Calvin?” Abby said in a weak voice as Calvin turned to leave the room. He turned back around. She gave him a watery smile. “Thanks,” she sputtered, looking down at her hands. “I – I couldn’t have done this without you, I don’t think.”

Calvin gave her a small smile, and shrugged, unsure of what to say.

“I’ll leave some dinner for you in the fridge tonight, in case you and Susie don’t get a chance for a bite,” Abby continued. “I…I think I’m going to go ahead and turn in early tonight. It’s been such a long day.”

“All right, Mom. Sleep tight.”

A few minutes later, Calvin bounded back up the steps, having put his father’s clothes into the trunk of Mom’s car, and went to the guest room, closing the door behind him. Glancing at his watch, he figured he had perhaps a half hour to rummage through the boxes his mother had left for him before he went to pick up Susie. Getting the doors of the closet open was a feat, considering he had a mound of his own clothes lying in front of the closet doors, but saw right away the boxes she’d been talking about. Two of them, lined up neatly on the floor of the closet. Two boxes were all that was left of his childhood. For some reason, that made him feel a little sad.

Just a little, mind you. Not much. No, it didn’t bother him. Sure, most parents kept more of their child’s beloved toys and books, but it didn’t bother Calvin. No way.

He wiped away a couple of tears.

Nah. No biggie.

He grabbed the box farthest to the right and shoved everything off the bed to make room for the box. Ripping the tape off of the top, Calvin stared into his past buried in a medium-sized cardboard box. He reached in and grabbed the first thing he touched; an action figure. He stared at it for a moment, not even remembering who the action figure was supposed to be of. “That’s a donation,” he muttered, tossing the figure onto the left side of the bed. Next he pulled out an old fedora hat. A square piece of paper was tucked into the band around the scruffy hat, which had ink stains and small holes around the top. Calvin studied it for a moment, the memories coming back slowly; he’d stolen the hat from Dad, he was sure of that much. The memory suddenly hit him and he smiled. The hat was a remnant of one of his childhood personas, a private eye he’d named Tracer Bullet, as a child having vaguely felt that this was an excellent moniker for a hard-boiled PI inspired by a character in one of Dad’s books. That, too, went into the donation pile.

He pulled out old Halloween costumes, comic books (he almost convinced himself to keep those), some binoculars Dad had given him after Calvin had broken Dad’s pair, drawings of monsters and dinosaurs, a few broken toys. With the exception of the binoculars, which he threw in his bag, everything else went back in the box to donate. He checked his watch – ten minutes until he had to pick up Susie.

The other box in the bottom of the closet felt light as Calvin plunked it on the bed. After tearing off the tape covering the box, he opened it hastily and gawked inside. He frowned as he realized there was only one item in the box, wrapped up in some of his old t-shirts. Unwrapping the item carefully, a familiar face he hadn’t laid eyes on in years appeared under the clothing and Calvin found himself smiling. “Hobbes,” he said quietly, unwrapping the last of the t-shirts and throwing them on the bed. He placed Hobbes carefully down on top of the t-shirts and moved a chair by the bed a little closer, inspecting the old stuffed animal carefully.

This synthetic cloth and stuffing had been his best friend from the time he was six until a week before his eleventh birthday, when his parents had finally convinced him that an eleven year old with an imaginary friend was unhealthy. Almost five years, but not quite. And yet, those five years represented to Calvin his entire childhood; he couldn’t remember much before Hobbes, and the world hadn’t ever been quite the same without him. All in all, he was glad to see the old stuffed tiger again.

Calvin picked up Hobbes hesitatingly, holding him over the box from whence he came, debating with himself. What would he do with a stuffed tiger now, anyway? Maybe women could get away with having a childhood teddy bear inhabiting their bedrooms well past the age of needing a stuffed animal for comfort, but a man? It wasn’t even as though Calvin had an apartment or a house somewhere that contained a closet he could hide Hobbes away in. No, Hobbes would have to go with him everywhere, past airport security for hundreds of people to see, living in whatever place Calvin happened to be, sitting next to the razors and toothpaste, for potential girlfriends to wonder over. Did Calvin really want to be _that guy?_

The clock chimed downstairs and Calvin realized he was late in picking Susie up. He dropped Hobbes on the bed, grabbed a light jacket, and headed off into the night, deciding to delay that particular decision until later.

Susie was waiting on her front porch, holding a jacket in her arms, waiting. Calvin jogged up to her. “Well, where do you want to go?” he asked in lieu of a greeting.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Never has been much to do here.”

“You know this place better than me. This is the first time I’ve been home in five years.”

“Say we go for a walk and see where we end up?”

“An adventure? Sure,” Calvin conceded. They soon fell into an easy stride next to each other.

“So…uh, ever see anyone from high school around?” Calvin asked after a couple of awkward moments of silence.

Susie was equally grateful one of them had finally found a topic to converse about. “Remember Robert Crake?”

“Yeah. He was an asshole.”

“Maybe. Runs his father’s business downtown. A little hardware store. But with the new superstores he isn’t doing so well right now.”

“That’s too bad.”

“A lot of places are starting to close up. Developments right outside of town with all those big-box stores are shutting the independent places down. There’s starting to be some sprawl out towards the edge of town, with new houses and neighborhoods.”

Calvin’s mind flitted back to yesterday afternoon where he’d found his woods decimated with tameness and comfortable domesticity. “I noticed,” he said somewhat darkly.

“I saw Molly Johnson the other day at the bakery. She’s Molly Rinker now, married John Rinker, remember him? She was the cheer squad captain or whatever they call them, wanted to be a cheerleader for some pro-football league, the Patriots I think. Popular, pretty, star athlete boyfriend. Has five kids now and just got divorced, and one of the kids is in juvvie.”

“Crazy how things turn out, eh?”

“You can never tell with people. Some people never change from who they were in high school, others do a complete one-eighty.”

“You’re the same as you always were, Susie.”

“So are you, Calvin. So are you.”

“That’s a good thing, by the way,” Calvin said as they dropped into a table at a pizza parlor a few minutes later, having come upon the tiny hole in the wall restaurant near the downtown square. “I mean, about not changing. I always thought you were all right.”

“All right? Well, I’m flattered. Of course, as I remember it, I spent most of my childhood being pelted by you with snowballs and water balloons.”

Calvin grinned and shrugged good-naturedly. “That was a sign of affection, Derkins.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“This place hasn’t changed either. I used to bring some of my dates here in junior high and high school,” Calvin said, looking around. “I remember one time when I brought Kathy Diger here when we were fifteen or sixteen, brought her in my dad’s car, I paid with the money I earned at my little job at the print store, and I was damn proud to be seen with her – good looking girl. She ate seven slices of pizza then puked it all up in Dad’s car on the way home.” Calvin shook his head. “I had to spend my next paycheck on a detail job for that car, but it always smelled vaguely of barf.”

“And I take it you didn’t date her again.”

“Well, where was there left to go after that? Once a girl pukes in your car, you have to make up your mind – do you like this girl enough to go out with her again, even though you’ve seen her puke, or do you just cut your losses and walk away?”

Susie laughed, startling Calvin slightly. “I always sort of wondered why you never asked me out,” Susie said quietly after a moment, pretending to be absorbed in the menu in front of her.

Calvin stared for a moment. How does one answer such a thing? “Well…um…I guess I didn’t think you’d say yes. You know. Snowballs and water balloons.” He fiddled with a fork in front of him. “Out of curiosity, would you have said yes if I’d asked you?”

Susie fidgeted. “Uh – well – yes, I guess so, if I didn’t think you were joking.”

“Why would I have been joking if I’d asked?”

She gave him a flat look. “You really don’t remember?”

“No. Why? I didn’t you a hard time in high school.”

“ _You_ didn’t. Everyone else did. I was the brain, remember? Look, it wouldn’t have been the first time – you know, some gorgeous guy asking me out, only to be stood up on date night then laughed at the next day at school for believing it was a genuine offer.” She put the menu on the table top, hating to relieve the memories, but they came anyway, ever since she’d come back to this god-forsaken town. “I was so naïve back then. I could ace a test with no problem but I always fell for the same damn thing when it came to the possibility of a social life. Molly Johnson coming up to me and asking me to join the cheer squad, telling me I was pretty enough, athletic enough, then humiliating me when I showed up at tryouts. Guys wanting to grope me at a dance but not acknowledging me during school. People acting like they were my friends only to stab me in the back. I was so dumb then, Calvin. So dumb, so naïve.”

“Hey look, that isn’t stupidity. Those people were assholes, all right? And look where they ended up, eh? Living in the same damn town they grew up in, never doing much, never seeing the world, nothing. Their whole world is this little town in the middle of nowhere. So you got plenty on them, Susie. Look at you, eh? You got out of this place, got yourself an education and a job you loved. And hell, people like that were paying _you_ to listen to their problems, right? I think the score is about even.”

“I wish it was that simple. Look, I don’t want to ruin our night with this – Calvin, it was always different for you,” she said, looking into his eyes. “That stuff…that stuff never affected you. You lived in your own world with your own rules. I wasn’t as strong as that. I took what people said to heart.”

Calvin shrugged somewhat helplessly; he had never been very good at solving anyone’s problems, not even his own. “It never seemed important,” he offered finally. “Besides, you and I were friends, right?”

“I don’t remember that,” Susie said, turning back to her menu.

“Sure we were. Well, all right, maybe not _friends…_ but we knew each other pretty well growing up. When your mom got a job, you would stay at my house after school, remember? That lasted until what, we were 13 or so, and your mom thought it was ok for you to stay alone for a couple of hours. So we always knew each other.”

“Knowing someone doesn’t make them your friend.”

“Well it makes them something.”

“If you were my friend, then why didn’t you…you know, stick up for me?”

“Stick up for you? When?”

“Some of those guys were your friends, you know. They must have talked about it. How come you never told them to knock it off? We’re both only children, Calvin – you were the closest thing I had to a brother, and I’m willing to bet I was the closest thing you had to a sister. I didn’t have many friends. But I know you saw some of what went on.”

“Wait, wait. Are you blaming me for this?”

“No, I’m not. I’m just asking, if we were friends, in any way whatsoever, why didn’t…well, I mean, just once, could you have told your friends to leave me alone? They would have listened to you.”

Calvin leaned near her and spoke quietly. “Honey, the minute they invent a time machine, I’ll go back and slug those guys if it would make you feel better, all right? But until then, there isn’t much I can do for you.”

“It’s always been about you, Calvin. Even as kids, even as teenagers. You lived in your own world, where you were the only one who counted, who mattered.”

“It was fifteen goddamned years ago.”

“I said you hadn’t changed, Calvin, and I meant it.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Derkins, I’ve been back in this town for forty-eight hours. This is the longest conversation we’ve had since junior high. And you’re passing judgments on what kind of person _I_ turned out to be? You don’t know me. You don’t know me at all. And at least I’ve let go of stuff in the past.”

“Really. And is that why you don’t even know if you loved your own father? The past has to mean something, Calvin.”

“Fuck the past, and fuck this,” Calvin barked, throwing the menu down on the table and getting up. “I don’t need this shit, especially from a psychiatrist.”

“A psychologist is different from a psychiatrist.”

“Not really, honey. You both deal in utter bullshit.”

With this, Calvin strode out of the pizza parlor, leaving Susie sitting at the table. He practically dove into the first bar he came across and ordered a beer, which quickly turned into two beers, which quickly turned into eight. He finally realized he might be a little sloshed when he realized that the person he’d been having a deep conversation with for fifteen minutes was, in fact, a cardboard cut-out of a football player the bar left out to advertise beer. At that point, realizing he was alone, he paid his tab and stumbled out onto the street.

It had been like this for as long as he could remember, Calvin suddenly realized. Not so much the drunken part (though he’d seen plenty of those nights), but the loneliness. Wherever his adventures took him, whoever he met along the way, he always ended them in the same way: alone. _In fact,_ he thought to himself, _that cardboard cut-out could be a metaphor for my entire adult life, really – always talking, no one listening._

He hadn’t brought a car, and taxis were rare in this small city, so Calvin instead lumbered his way back home, fumbling with the key in the front door and letting himself in. No lights were on in the Derkins’ household. Calvin shut the front door and leaned against it. Where the hell had that conversation with Susie gone wrong, anyway? Jesus, and to think he’d been so stupid as to think someone some sort of friendship could have been rekindled between the two of them. Despite what Susie had said, Calvin _had_ considered her a friend. Maybe not the type of friend you talk to every day – or every week – but because you had such a long history together, you could meet again after years and pick up right where you left off. He wanted to think he was capable of having at least _one_ friend like that.

 _Or even just one friend,_ he thought dismally to himself.

He slammed his fist against the door. They were both lonely, he grasped that much. They had gone separate ways in their life, but they had started life together. Goddammit, didn’t that count for something?

Why couldn’t there be one person on this entire planet with whom he got along? Who understood him? Where had he left that all behind? When had he decided that sort of thing wasn’t for him anymore? He sent a single, desperate wish to the heavens and then struggled upstairs to his bedroom.

He flipped on the lights, tore off his nice shirt he’d worn out with Susie, and put on a comfortable old t-shirt laying on his bed. Next to that, his sight caught hold of Hobbes. He grinned and grabbed Hobbes, drunkenly staggered into the bathroom, and slammed the old stuffed tiger on the counter near the sink. Calvin turned his back, unzipped, and let loose, sighing loudly in relief. “I tell ya, buddy, eight beers play havoc on a guy’s bladder,” Calvin explained sagely in a slurred voice.

“Looking at you now, I’d have to agree,” came a voice from behind him.

Calvin yelped (much more girlishly than he would ever admit to anyone) and spun around too fast, causing him to fall into the bathtub, tearing the shower curtain off the rod in the process. He frantically clawed the fabric away, allowing him to see who had followed him into the bathroom. His eyes quickly adjusted to his sudden sobriety but as Calvin looked all around him he could see the bathroom was empty. Struggling out of the shower curtain and tripping over the lip of the tub, he steadied himself with a hand placed on the counter and roared, “Who’s there? Who the _fuck_ is there?”

He was met with silence. Breathing raggedly, Calvin quickly zipped himself up and looked around in a frenzy, trying to find anything in the bathroom that might be used as a weapon. In desperation, he tore the towel rod out of the wall and removed the ends so as to have a skinny metal rod to use as a bat. His hair fell down into his eyes and he flipped it out of his face angrily as he ventured out into the hallway, metal rod poised for whatever intruder had broken into his house. His mother was asleep upstairs and though he’d never thought himself a particularly good son, he sure as hell wasn’t going to let some maniac murder her in her home. He set his jaw and looked around every corner as he slowly made his way towards the living room. Blood pounded in his ears and though he’d been in plenty of fights, and seemed to sometimes get a kind of carnal pleasure in them, he never liked unknown quantities when it came to defending himself.

 _I’m using a thin aluminum rod as a weapon. I’m drunk. And I’m fairly sure I’ve got piss on my jeans,_ Calvin thought to himself as he crept along the walls. He heard a crash in the kitchen followed by drawers and cupboards opening and closing. He slunk towards the noise and stopped dead at the sight in front of him. The towel rod clanked noisily to the floor and rolled into a corner. His jaw was agape.

There was a tiger. In his kitchen. Standing upright. Sloppily slurping from a can of tuna. Having finished the can, the tiger threw it haphazardly behind him, licking his fingers. The tiger caught sight of Calvin standing in the doorway and put his hands on his hips.

“Well aren’t you a sight,” the tiger noted sarcastically, looking at the disheveled man in front of him. “The least you could do would be to keep the kitchen stocked. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve eaten?”

“Wh-What – Who – Wh – What are – Did you eat my tuna?” Calvin managed to stammer.

“Yes. All _one_ can of it,” the tiger said pointedly. Calvin didn’t move or change his expression for a good ten seconds, when finally the tiger said in an exasperated tone, “It’s _me._ Don’t act like you don’t remember. How many talking tigers could you have known in your life?”

“Hobbes?” Calvin offered weakly.

“I’m hungry,” Hobbes proclaimed in the way of an answer. “Are we going to eat, or what?”

Calvin carefully made his way into the kitchen, skirting Hobbes as best he could, trying to fit this moment into his brain somehow. “Ok. Let’s be rational about this.”

“Let’s! How about this. You cook some food. Then I’ll eat it. That way, you won’t have a starving ferocious wild animal stalking your hallways tonight. Everyone wins.”

“Right,” Calvin said resolutely.

“Right!” Hobbes echoed enthusiastically. “I notice you’ve got a leftover rotisserie chicken in the fridge. Not a lot of people know this, but in a pinch, rotisserie chickens are a very good substitute for tuna.”

Calvin wasn’t listening. “It is rare, of course, to have both vivid auditory and visual hallucinations when inebriated, but not unheard of. In fact, it’s happened to me once before, which explains this predisposition to this issue while intoxicated. When I was in the Marquesas, I had too much of the local brew and was convinced that a pterodactyl was dive bombing the beach bar singing Guns n’ Roses songs in an incredibly threatening manner. Obviously, because I’ve spent the last several years out of the country, my digestive system is unaccustomed to the type of hops used in the beer in this region of the world. Thus, this hallucination is the result of mild alcohol poisoning.”

“That…is a fascinating theory. But it still doesn’t solve the fact that I’m hungry,” Hobbes stated calmly.

“You know what? Fine! I can spend the evening with an imaginary friend from my childhood, right?” Calvin said to himself, laughing somewhat manically and rubbing the back of his neck. “I mean, that’s what you do when you’ve had too much to drink, right? Converse with things that aren’t really there? Hell, I did it tonight in the bar, didn’t I? So why the hell not? And when I wake up in the morning, besides having a wicked hangover, everything will be back to normal. I’ll change out of my piss-soaked jeans, I’ll have breakfast with Mom, hell, maybe I’ll even shave. And my stuffed tiger will be a stuffed tiger again.”

“I resent that,” Hobbes said, arms crossed.

“Eggs. I want some eggs,” Calvin said cheerfully. “Do you want some eggs? I could really go for some eggs right about now. Jesus Christ, I love eggs.”

“An egg is meat that isn’t done growing yet. Why eat the egg if you can wait for it to grow into meat?”  

“Excellent question, Hobbes m’friend,” Calvin said, swooping into the kitchen, fairly sure he was either having a nervous breakdown or that he was dreaming. He was leaning towards the former. “And let’s discuss it over some eggs. We can argue about chickens, what came first, all of that.”

Calvin dumped the yolks of a full carton of eggs onto a frying pan as Hobbes leaned, head in his paws, on the counter, watching him carefully. “You willed me back, you know,” Hobbes told him.

“That raises some interesting philosophical points. Mainly, that by the implications of your comment, that you had somewhere _to_ go until I willed you back. And seeing as how you didn’t, and that I’m talking to a hallucination anyway, I don’t see how it makes the slightest bit of difference.”

“Of course not. But then again, I liked you better when you were a kid. At least you didn’t pee your pants then force me to eat eggs.”

“Wait until Susie psychoanalyses _this._ Lord, she’ll be busy for a month.”

Calvin slopped some eggs onto a plate and shoved it towards Hobbes, then took a large wooden spoon from the drawer, jumped up onto the counter, and began to eat out of the frying pan, groaning with pleasure. “I dare any man to find a more perfect food than an egg,” Calvin stated. Despite his protests, Hobbes dutifully finished the eggs and wiped his mouth with the back of his paw. Calvin continued to study him carefully.

“Amazing. I haven’t dreamed you up since I was eleven, and yet every detail is exactly as I remember. You even appear to me as vivid as any other sentient being, and I hear your voice as I would anyone else’s. Just amazing. I’ll need to find out what kind of beer that was. And then never, ever drink it again.”

“You don’t understand,” Hobbes said, leaning against the counter once again, and looking at Calvin carefully. “ _You_ willed me back. This isn’t a dream.”

Calvin jumped down off the counter, threw the frying pan into the sink (making an awful clattering sound), then grabbed a medicine bottle out of the cupboard in front of him. “Only one way to find out, right?” He popped a few pills into his mouth and swallowed them dry. “Ahhhh,” he crooned, as if he’d swallowed something incredibly delicious. “Sleeping pills. Science’s gift to insomniacs and hyped up drunks everywhere. In twenty minutes I’ll be zonked out for at least the next twelve hours. When I wake up, I’ll be nice and sober, and you’ll stay a childhood memory.”

Hobbes shrugged good-naturedly. “Childhood memories are stronger than we think. Sweet dreams.”

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Abby’s alarm clock went off at 6am, as it did every morning. Of course, normally it was so David could get up, take a shower, and have breakfast before leaving work, but over the years Abby had found herself getting up at the same time as he, making the coffee downstairs and retrieving the newspaper from the doorstep. Now that David was gone, it seemed as though old habits died hard, and Abby found herself rubbing her eyes and stretching in the early morning light before heading to the bathroom to take a shower.

After noticing the shampoo bottle was empty as she reached in to turn on the showerhead, Abby rooted around in the cupboard under the sink to find another bottle. She grasped onto a round tube and saw through bleary eyes that it was a can of David’s shaving cream, an extra bottle he’d always kept so that he never ran out. Abby bit her lip and sighed. There was no use in keeping it – she could use it to shave her legs, she supposed, but she, for one, did not want her legs smelling like men’s shaving cream – and she carefully placed it back on the counter, looking at it steadily for a moment. She was going to have to get used to running into David’s things left behind somewhere accidentally in the house, she supposed. Shaking her head, she found the shampoo bottle and got in the shower, suddenly feeling very old.

The heaviness continued as she went downstairs after her shower to make the coffee and read the morning paper, as she’d done for a good twenty years. Once in the kitchen, she noticed dirty pans and plates stacked up in the sink, as well as a carton of eggs sitting on the counter.

“What in the world?” she muttered to herself, looking at the mess, as Apollo appeared at her side with wide eyes. She looked down at him and smiled. “Need to go out, Apollo?”

He barked as an answer to her question.

Abby let him out the back door then quickly washed the dishes. Calvin must have come home late and eaten, she guessed. She made some coffee, grabbed the newspaper from outside, then sat down at the kitchen table. She jumped slightly when she found herself staring at a worn stuffed tiger perched on top of the table. Baffled as to why Calvin would have brought Hobbes downstairs, she looked to her left to find Calvin asleep on the couch, drooling slightly. She placed Hobbes next to him and resumed her morning activities.

By eleven a.m., she was sick of being quiet and Calvin had not yet awoken from his slumber, which was punctuated by loud snorts and snores every so often. Abby dragged the vacuum cleaner from the closet, plugged it in, placed it in front of Calvin on the couch, and turned it on.

Calvin shot straight up, clutching his head. “Mom!” he shouted in protest over the roar of the vacuum.

Abby shut off the vacuum pointedly and leaned on the handle. “It’s eleven o’clock. I don’t suppose you were planning on getting up any time soon?”

“Not if I can help it,” Calvin muttered as he stretched out on the couch again, closing his eyes, and preparing to go back to sleep. He could already tell last night’s alcohol had done a number on his head and that he’d probably being nursing a hangover for a good portion of the day.

Seeing Calvin’s intentions, Abby again calmly flipped the switch on the vacuum cleaner. Calvin shot her a dirty look. She turned it off and barely suppressed a smirk. “I can do this all day, kiddo.”

Knowing that his mother was not to be trifled with, Calvin reluctantly sat up and rubbed his head. “I’m a little old to be called ‘kiddo’.”

“You’ll always be my kiddo, whether you like it or not. Come on. Time to get up.”

Calvin groaned and peeled himself off the couch.

“Take Hobbes with you,” his mother commanded.

“Wha?” Calvin looked down to the couch to find a stuffed orange tiger looking back up at him. He snatched Hobbes somewhat aggressively and then made his slinking way up the stairs, grumbling all the way about the indignities of life on Earth and having to get up before noon. Abby watched him go and shook her head; it had been a long time since that boy had lived under her roof, and he was still no easier to get up in the morning.

Upstairs, Calvin found a clean shirt under a pile of dirty ones, pulled it out and wrestled it over his head. He turned to find Hobbes, alive and well, staring back at him with a large grin. Calvin yelped. “Jesus!” he cried. _It wasn’t a dream,_ Calvin thought to himself, dumbfounded.

“Morning!” the tiger greeted him cheerfully, smiling wide and stretching. “Sleep well?”

“I’ve had more comfortable nights,” Calvin admitted slowly, looking at Hobbes carefully, unable to believe that Hobbes – _his_ Hobbes – was sitting on his bed, looking as alive as any living being in existence. He laughed in disbelief. “I don’t know why you’re back. But I guess it doesn’t do any good to lie and say it isn’t good to see you again…even if it is a manifestation of insanity,” he said, muttering the last part.

“Why worry about it?” Hobbes said with a disaffected shrug, picking his teeth ( _fangs_ , Calvin reminded himself) with a straw that had been left on Calvin’s bed stand. “Far more important things in the world to worry about. Deforestation. Ozone layer depletion. Lunch.”

“Can’t say I’ve given it a helluva lot of thought,” Calvin said, sinking down into a chair in the corner. “Can’t say I’ve ever given _you_ a helluva lot of thought either.”

“What do you mean?” Hobbes asked, a slightly hurt look in his eye. “We’re best friends, aren’t we?”

“I didn’t mean like that.” Calvin sighed. “When I was a kid, you and I…we just _were._ It didn’t matter. Never came up. I just took it in my stride. I must have been a weird kid.”

There was a brisk knock on the door and Abby entered to find Calvin looking lost in his thoughts. Calvin snapped around to see her, then glanced back to where Hobbes was. A stuffed tiger stared back at him.

“You all right?” Abby asked with a concerned look on her face.

“Sure,” Calvin lied.

“All right enough to do some yard work for me?”

Calvin grimaced before catching the look on his mother’s face and he sighed. Mom didn’t have anyone to do it for her anymore and besides, yard work would be a good excuse to get away from the Room with a Tiger for a while. He nodded and they both made their way outside.

He spent the afternoon doing the kinds of chores he had always hated and ones that had always kept him from buying a house anywhere. He cleaned gutters, weeded the flowerbeds, mowed the lawn, and sprayed weed killer on patches of green growing up from cracks in the sidewalk and driveway. He refused lunch from his mother, not wanting to be in the house any more than he had to be, and forced himself to keep his mind off of Hobbes. By mid-afternoon, he was sweaty, filthy, and exhausted.

Naturally, that’s when Suzie emerged from the house next door.

For the next fifteen minutes, they played an unspoken game where each of them tried to pretend they hadn’t spotted the other. Calvin trimmed bushes near the front door and Suzie weeded her own flower beds, flicking her hair out of her face every few moments. Finally, Calvin threw down the trimmer and ambled slowly over to Suzie. Even as a child, he couldn’t stand to let things stay unsaid between himself and another person. Naturally, it didn’t always mean he wanted to apologize, or to make up, or anything of the sort – he was just as likely to pick up an argument where it had been left off as he was to say he was sorry. All the same, Susie was the only other person in town he knew anymore besides his mother, and he hated the thought of a stuffed tiger being his only companion.

He scratched the back of his head, unsure of what to say.

“So let’s not pretend things went well last night,” he stated, not bothering with a greeting.

“I think that’d be wise,” Suzie retorted, not looking up from her flowerbeds.

“Life here is a little more complicated than I remember it,” Calvin said, sticking his hands in his pockets and looking at the sky. “Thing is…thing is, I don’t know too many people in town. Not anymore, anyway. I could…I could use someone to talk to about something, actually.”

Suzie stood up, brushing her hands on her jeans. “Calvin, anytime you want to talk about how you feel about your dad’s passing, I’m here to listen.”

“It isn’t about Dad,” Calvin said, somewhat gruffly, finally looking at her.

Suzie arched an eyebrow. “Really? Then what is it?”

“It’s… it’s complicated.” He sighed and kicked at the ground, realizing how insane it would sound coming out of his mouth. He thought better of it and said, “Look, I’ve got some of Dad’s old books in my room upstairs. They’re all old patent law books, useless to everyone because they’re so out of date. I need to take them to a recycling center but I don’t know where one is. Can I get some help?”

Susie placed her trowel behind a bush. “Sure. I’ll help you carry them then we’ll go.”

As they both made their way up the stairs, Calvin wondered if this little plan of his would work. If Susie could also see and hear Hobbes, it would prove that he wasn’t crazy. Once inside his room, Susie gasped and Calvin’s heart leapt. He turned, hoping to see that look of surprise he must have worn when he first saw Hobbes again, but instead Susie’s hands were clasped to her chest and she was smiling widely.

“Oh look, it’s your tiger! I remember him!” Susie said, sweeping across the room and scooping the stuffed tiger up. “I can’t believe your mom kept him!”

“Me either,” Calvin muttered flatly, leaning against the wall, arms crossed in front of him.

“Look! He’s still got a little of that daub of paint on him from second grade art class when you got in that paint fight with…uh, yourself,” Susie said with a quick smile as Calvin arched an eyebrow. “Then you were suspended for two days for throwing a ball of paint at the teacher after declaring that all was fair in love and art.” She laughed at the memory, still clutching Hobbes. Calvin grabbed the stuffed tiger away and threw him under the bed.

“Yeah, well, I was a little anarchist then, did whatever the hell I wanted,” Calvin said tersely, throwing open the closet to retrieve the law books.

“Still do, as far as I can tell,” Susie observed.

Suddenly, as if out of a dream, Calvin heard the _last thing_ he wanted to hear.

Hobbes. Hooting with laughter. Under the bed.

“Oh boy I remember that day!” Hobbes cried. “You even had paint on your shoes and socks, and left a little trail of footprints down to the principal’s office!” He howled with laughter at the memory.

Calvin nervously turned around to look at Susie. She would have to be deaf to have missed that. But as Calvin studied her, he could see she hadn’t heard a thing, and was instead looking at some pictures on the wall of a disastrous skiing trip Calvin and his parents had gone on when he was fifteen.

So it _was_ just him. No one could see or hear Hobbes but him. Just like it had been when he was a kid.

“You remember how your mom hit the roof when you got home? Remember? It was snowy that day and the entry hall was slippery with melted snow, so when you slipped you reached out to grab the closet doorknob but you grabbed – ” Hobbes broke off here, laughing too hard to go on, before he composed himself a moment later. “ – you grabbed your Mom’s dress, and she was all dressed up to go to out to dinner with your dad? Wet green paint all over her dress! Heeheehoohee…oh, that was classic!”

“That’s enough!” Calvin said sharply. Susie turned to him in surprise.

“What?”

“I mean – that’s enough. Enough books for this trip,” Calvin said quickly. “No use throwing our backs out over a few old law books, right?”

“Riiiight,” Susie said slowly, studying Calvin closely. “Calvin, is everything all right? You seem sort of…jumpy.”

“Love’ll do that to a guy,” came Hobbes’ voice sagely from under the bed. Calvin resisted the urge to kick him.

“I’m – I’m fine. C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

“Eager for the fireworks to start, hm lover boy? Go on! Smooch her!” Hobbes continued to taunt. Calvin gritted his teeth as he remembered Hobbes always had given him a hard time about Susie even as a kid, which resulted in plenty of tussles and insults hurled at one another. He supposed it had always bothered him so much because, deep down, he _had_ always had a little – just a tiny, miniscule, practically microscopic, mind you – crush on Susie Derkins. Despite himself, Calvin felt himself blush slightly as Hobbes’ voice continued to resonate in the small room, audible only to him. “Muchas Smoochas! Woo!”

Susie exited the room, pile of law books in her hands, and Calvin took the opportunity to kick blindly under the bed. “What is _wrong_ with you? Will you shut up?” he whispered fiercely.

“How about you get me out from under here? This is where _spiders_ live.”

“This is crazy,” Calvin muttered. “Look, I’ll – I’ll be back later. We can…talk…then.”

Calvin hurried down to the car and jumped in the driver’s side, with Susie already buckled in beside him and told him how to get to the recycling center. As they drove through the town, Calvin cleared his throat.   
  
“So, about that…thing…I wanted to talk to you about…”

“Yes?” Susie led him helpfully.

Calvin shifted in his seat. “Well…”  How, exactly, would he talk about this without sounding completely crazy? Calvin sighed; he didn’t see any way to do that, and would have to resort to one of his lifelong habits – fibbing.

“It’s…it’s Mom,” he lied. “She…well, see, she’s seeing things.”

“Seeing things?” Suzie asked, eyebrow arched. “Like what?”

“She’s…well, it doesn’t matter. But she talks to these things. You know, like they’re real or something.”

“Is she talking to your father?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. But it’s creepy. And weird. You know? She doesn’t…she doesn’t like talking to things that aren’t there. And she doesn’t know why they’ve suddenly appeared. She’s confused. She doesn’t want anyone to think she’s crazy because talking to things that aren’t real is not what a grown ma – woman, I mean – does, you know?”

“I see,” Suzie said slowly, searching Calvin’s face carefully. She couldn’t bring herself to fully believe him. “Does your mother feel threatened by these things?”

“No, not really.”

“Did yo – did she do any hard drugs in the past? A lot of heavy drinking? Serious head injury? Anything that could’ve damaged the brain in some way?”

“No.”

“Well, Calvin, it could be a lot of things,” Suzie said with a shrug. “Want me to talk to her about it?”

“No!” Calvin barked quickly. “She didn’t want me telling anyone. But since you’re a psychiatrist – ”

“Psychologist.”

“…then I thought maybe you could help. You know, give some pointers.”

“Calvin, if it isn’t…impeding her life in any way, it’s probably part of the grieving process. Losing your dad so suddenly must have been very difficult. She might be looking for closure. Everyone grieves a little differently. Maybe these…things…are helping her through her grief.”

“Like a subconscious sort of thing manifesting itself?”

“Sorta. But Calvin, promise me that if it continues for much longer, or if the hallucinations get violent, you need to tell me right away, all right? This isn’t an average reaction to grief, but I have seen it a few times. And it’s temporary. Usually it goes away on its own after a few days.”

“Is it ok for m – _her_ to talk to these things?”

“Sure. The human brain has funny ways of coping with grief, and everyone is a little different.”

“But it – it goes away on its own?”

“Usually. But if it keeps happening, if it last longer than a few days, she needs to see someone about it.”

“Good. That’s great. That’s _wonderful,”_ Calvin exclaimed, grinning from ear to ear in relief. 

“Calvin, how are _you_ doing through all of this?” Suzie asked, looking at Calvin in a concerned way.

“Fine. I’m fine,” Calvin said briskly, turning right. “Yeah, doing good. Look, sorry to bother you with all those questions, but I didn’t know who else to ask. Most people would probably just think that Mom is crazy, and it isn’t that. Just…more complicated than I remember,” he repeated, his mouth tightening slightly. “Can I ask you a weird question?”

“It seems to be one of your specialties.”

“I had a girlfriend once who told me that birth was an invasion of privacy. But then wouldn’t that mean that sentience is an unnatural state? Wouldn’t that mean that all life, as we know it, is born already having been wronged in some way, and so nothing in this world is really average? That weird, unexplainable things happen _because_ of _,_ and not _in spite of,_ this unnatural state of sentience?”

“Go on.”

“It’s correlation versus causation,” Calvin explained, getting more interested in his idea as he went on. “Do weird things happen simply because life _itself_ is weird? The variables of environment in any given life form’s evolutionary pattern is staggeringly at odds with the chance of sentience happening _at all,_ right? Things are the way they are by pure chance. The fact that you and I can sit here communicating is pure chance, because it just as easily could have happened that our evolutionary patterns could have evolved us into fish incapable of speech, but instead through a series of chance happenings and mutations, we’re able to drive this car, we’re able to talk, we’re able to think abstractly. So then, does that mean that _chance_ is natural, while _sentience_ is simply a fluke? So why can’t weird things happen, things we can’t explain with our own past experiences and intelligence, because _everything in the world_ is just…weird?”

“And what are the chances that that’s the first thing I’ve heard you say since you got back that actually _sounds_ like you, Calvin? That’s you – playing around with ideas for no other reason than they _interest_ you with any number of possible answers.” Susie gave him a small smile. “I forgot how oddly interesting it is to hear you talk about what goes on inside that head of yours.”

Calvin gave her an earnest but timid smile in return. “It’s…been a while. I haven’t had to think like this in a long time.”

“Well, I don’t know what happened to give you those sorts of ideas again, but it’s…good to have you back.”

Calvin settled in his seat comfortably. Hobbes’ reappearance had kickstarted his mind in a way that hadn’t been used in a long while, forcing him to think, to philosophize, to seek answers in an abstract way. Suddenly, he was almost looking forward to getting back home to an old stuffed tiger.  

“Well,” he said with a smile. “It’s just an idea.”


	6. Chapter 6

Calvin knew he needed to speak to Hobbes, if only to test out Susie's theory that it was some sort of strange part of the grieving process and was temporary, but the rest of the afternoon and evening had been spent in front of the television, mindlessly flipping through channels, not really paying attention to anything on the screen, instead deeply lost in his own thoughts. He had said a few words to his mother about something – dinner, maybe – but the conversation was immediately forgotten. His mind was back in the woods,  _his_ woods, straying as far back as he could remember, when his world was much safer and much more knowable.

There was something he was missing in all of this, some catalyst that had heretofore escaped him despite the fact that it  _felt_ as though an unknowable feeling was staring him in the face, begging to be recognized, named, and faced head on. Before coming home, he had long dismissed this vague feeling that something was missing, that there was some answer out there waiting for him that he'd not yet arrived at. Now back at home, a nameless, faceless  _something_ was torturing him.

And he had a feeling Hobbes had something to do with it. He just wasn't sure he was ready for the answer yet.

Calvin switched the television off and threw a few logs into the fireplace, fumbling for matches and a rolled up newspaper. Within moments, a blazing fire crackled invitingly in the fireplace, and Calvin sat down in front of it, deciding that a fire was probably better to stare blankly into than a flickering box that spent endless amounts of time trying to get him to buy something. He suddenly felt very small and very young, sitting there much as he used to when he was younger, when he'd plan his next snowball assault at Susie, or make up never-ending codes shared only between Hobbes and he, or create clubs for Hobbes and he because he knew none of the other kids in the neighborhood would ever let him into theirs. Countless cups of hot cocoa had been consumed right here during cold winters, hundreds of arguments with Hobbes won or lost here, and one of the proudest moments of his young life when his father had let him build the fire for the first time ever.

So many conflicting thoughts about his father ricocheted endlessly through his mind. Consciously, he knew David had done the best he knew how and had tried to pass on as much knowledge to his son as he could; Calvin had always felt  _he_ was the screw-up, not his father. Calvin had always felt he  _should_ have turned into the kind of son David had wanted, because David had tried his best to  _raise_ Calvin that way, but somehow the lesson never quite stuck. He could count on one hand the number of skills his father had imparted to him that he still used and enjoyed – the ability to fish (it had come in handy on a few of his excursions when there wasn't readily available food for miles), how to find north (also helpful in his excursions), how to repair simple mechanical things like bicycles, and how to build a fire. Calvin sighed; all of that could be learned in a few days, and that was all he really could count as his father having taught him in all the years they were together?

What the hell was wrong with him?

Calvin looked outside and saw that the sun had set and a brisk breeze was drifting through the trees outside, and his mind was again in his woods. The woods had been his sanctuary when his world and the expectations in it had been too much. He remembered his early life like he'd been being pulled in all different directions – his teachers wanted this of him, his father wanted that of him – and he couldn't deliver on any of it. But the woods was his world, where he was master. He and Hobbes.

Before he could think better of it, Calvin darted to the closet and pulled out an old jacket that had belonged to his father, swung it over his shoulders, and ran upstairs, grabbing a duffel bag along the way. He burst into the guest room and dove under the bed to retrieve Hobbes. He pulled the stuffed tiger out and stared at him.

"Why aren't you alive?" he muttered to himself, wondering why Hobbes stared at him with two plastic button eyes instead of real ones. He shook the stuffed animal a little. Nothing. Shaking his head and deciding not to think about it too much, he shoved Hobbes in the duffel bag and raced down the steps, calling to his mother that he was going for a walk and would be back soon. Darting out into the night, Calvin practically broke into a run towards the woods.

Of course. It had always been this way. When the thoughts got to be too much, he grabbed Hobbes and ran for the woods. Always to the woods. Calvin barely slowed his step as he crashed through branches and stray leaves on the ground, panting hard with the effort, hearing twigs snapping under his swift feet and the skittering noises of rabbits dashing for cover. He knew he'd find his answer in the woods as he always did as his feet picked up the pace, throwing him into a headlong run, dodging boulders and small trees as he sprinted deeper into the woods, towards the clearing that he still considered his second home.

He knew he'd hit the clearing even before his eyes adjusted to the moonlight. The ground was always harder in the clearing, not as many roots softening the soil, and he came to an abrupt halt, as though he'd just hit an imaginary brick wall. Breathing hard, he looked around him wildly, not expecting to see anything but never able to be sure. This place had always held a little magic for him, something he couldn't entirely explain.

He dropped the duffel bag at his feet and took a deep breath of the invigorating evening air. A full moon shone down on him and a flock of birds flew overhead, a cloud of wings and black feathers. He found himself smiling slightly.

Calvin opened the duffel bag and set Hobbes on a nearby log, backing away slowly and keeping his eyes expectantly on the small stuffed creature.

"Talk," he commanded. Nothing happened. "Come – Come alive," Calvin tried again. A stuffed tiger continued to stare at him. Calvin sighed and turned away, putting his hands in his pockets and kicking at the ground. "Jesus, the only time I  _want_ you to come alive…" he murmured, running a hand through his hair.

He snuck a peek behind him. The stuffed tiger was still just a heap of stitches and cloth. Calvin sighed again, this time much more quietly. "I guess there isn't a law against talking to yourself alone in the woods," he said with a shrug. "Why is it that I can't stop thinking about this place? That my thoughts are always drawn back here, always to this spot, hm? Even when I'm not in this town – in this state – hell, on this  _continent –_ my mind still brings me back here. Sometimes I have this…crazy  _urge_ to hop a plane, and get back here, just so I can stand here for a minute. I'll be somewhere on the other side of the world, not even thinking about home, and  _bam!_ I suddenly have this overwhelming urge to be right here. With you. To be right here with you."

"It doesn't sound so strange to me," a voice came from behind Calvin. He turned to see Hobbes, looking as alive as he ever had, giving him a small smile. Calvin returned it.

"It doesn't?" Calvin asked.

"Course not. This was our world out here, wasn't it?" Hobbes said, making a sweeping gesture with his hand. "And not just because we were alone out here, but because represented everything we didn't  _have_ to be anywhere else. Whatever was going on anywhere else, this place was always what we made it – battlefield, alien planet, unexplored terrain – anything we wanted. So why wouldn't you want to come back here? You had control here; you didn't have much control over your life anywhere else."

Calvin watched as Hobbes got up, stretched ("…was under that bed too long…") and lay down in the grass, staring up at the stars with a smile. After a moment, Calvin laid down next to him.

"Hobbes…my father died."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"I was a terrible son," Calvin admitted quietly. "I never listened, I never did what he wanted, I never wanted to hear what he had to say. I didn't cry at the funeral."

"You loved him."

"I'm not so sure of that."

"No one feels guilty about not crying at a funeral unless they loved the person."

"I gave up my best friend for him."

"That was your choice. Not his."

"I didn't have a choice."

"You always have a choice. Even if you don't like either option, you always have a choice. Choice is objective. The illusion of not having a choice is subjective."

"I didn't want to."

"You did it anyway."

"Then I'm sorry."

"It doesn't matter," Hobbes whispered. "It doesn't work that way, anyway."

"What doesn't?"

"Me."

"That's what I thought," Calvin said with a sigh. "I suppose if I acknowledge it, it means I'm not crazy."

"Crazy is overrated."

"I had to wait this long to find out."

"Everything comes in its own time."

"I loved him," Calvin whispered, gazing at the stars above him. "I loved my Dad."

"That's right."

"It all comes back to that. That dichotomy. That being pulled in two different directions at once, and in your mind, that tugging isn't strange. It's life."

"Your life."

"Yeah. My life." Calvin exhaled slowly. "That's how it was with you and me, too. Remember? We were opposite in so many ways. That's why it worked."

"And that's why you loved your dad."

"I wrote a poem in college once. The first line was, 'All I want is to lay in the grass with my tiger.' The professor thought it was some deep metaphor about modern life. It wasn't. It was a commentary on loneliness. My loneliness. Everyone has such a hidden life inside their head. A whole universe fits between your ears, and you move through life giving up very few clues about it. You can't. People won't ever totally understand your own universe. Some of it has to be kept just for yourself. That's where you come in, isn't it?"

"How did the rest of the poem go?"

"Can't remember." Calvin bit his lip. "You remember the night you and I came across a puddle on the sidewalk, and I said something about my reflection? You said maybe  _I_ was the reflection, and the Calvin in the puddle was the real one. I stood there looking into that puddle until midnight when Dad finally found me and dragged me home. That's my life, Hobbes. Looking into a reflection of myself and wondering which is the real me."

"You're the Calvin who wants to lay in the grass with his tiger and the one who loved his father. The reflection is the guy who's been running most of his adult life."

"Exploring."

"Escaping. There's a difference."

"I had to. Too many people wanted too many different things. I couldn't spend my whole life being pulled in two different directions."

"Maybe you never realized that the directions themselves are choices. Crossroads aren't used as a metaphor for nothing."

"But metaphors are never as pretty on paper as they are in your head. Your own universe is too self-specific."

"Or that could be an excuse."

"Possibly. But a valid one, nonetheless. I've done my best."

"The world isn't as specific as you think it is. What is it about your life that you feel is so set in stone?"

"The fact that I can't change the past."

"What's the past got to do with the future? We don't move along towards an inevitable fate with no say in our destiny. It isn't that simple."

"I suppose I should be grateful for that."

"The only reason you always wanted to come back to this spot in the woods was because you always viewed it as being the only place on earth where you had a choice, a say, some control over what happened. But life  _is_ this spot in the woods. Choice is the mother of control, and it is limitless."

"Why can't I seem to see it that way, then?"

"You think by packing up and leaving that the next place will be better, that it'll be different. But your problems follow you, wherever you go, because  _you_ are your own problems, not the place, not the people."

They lay silently for a long time, until Calvin began to feel the chill of the soil in his back and the tip of his nose became cold.

"Hobbes?"

"Hm?"

"I have a choice now, don't I?"

"Yes."

Minutes later, the two walked through the woods, into the dense fog that had formed around them. One had a tail. The other wore a smile brighter than the moon above them.


	7. Chapter 7

It had been ten days since the funeral.

Calvin knew there were unspoken questions in the eyes of the visitors who dropped by to see Abby or to offer belated condolences. Their gazes hovered over Calvin for a half-second too long, and their eyebrows arched when asking him pointed questions about when he would need to "return to work", or when asking, in the most diplomatic of terms of course, how the business of cleaning out some possessions of the dead were going, as if that were what was keeping Calvin there. Again it struck Calvin how strange the rituals surrounding death and mourning were, as though there were pre-described periods of time in which to order one's affairs and any variation was seen as something odd or at the very least impolite.

Suzie, too, had asked Calvin several times when he was planning on leaving again. He knew she was perhaps the only one who meant nothing by it; she, more than anyone, knew of Calvin's propensity to never stay in one place too long and merely wanted to know when the next escape would take place.

The truth was, he had no idea.

Calvin hadn't told his mother, but the work he'd been doing for the travel company had been temporary. Travel writers normally worked as freelancers, and freelancing was a staple of the writer's lifestyle. One never grew too attached to their assignments because they never lasted longer than it took to submit the final draft to the publisher. Not only was the journalism career path changing rapidly into one of sparsely-paid freelance work, but the work of a writer was increasingly becoming that as well. Freelancing had been around since the dawn of the written word, but long stretches of history had seen the writer, in whatever capacity he or she worked in, belonging to a specific newspaper, or publishing company, or magazine. History had seen freelancing as what a struggling writer did until they could land a more permanent position. These were becoming ever rarer and now with the economy what it was, writers like Calvin, who had rarely been locked into anything long-term, found themselves scrambling to find any work at all, at any price. With the meteoric rise of the internet giving a global voice to whoever wanted it, the world became glutted with writers – good, bad, or at least competent enough to write a few words rehashing what someone else already wrote.

Calvin had spent the last three weeks before his father's death on the islands of Bora Bora having plenty to drink and writing letters to anyone and everyone he'd ever worked with, trying to scrounge up a job or two. The ethereal beauty of the islands – easily one of the most beautiful spots he'd ever been to – threatened to lull him into a sense of false security. But as his wallet got emptier, the more desperate he got and he was soon writing to places as far away as London and New York looking for anything – or anyone – that would pay him for his words, or anything else he could convince someone he could do. With his last few hundred dollars, he'd wanted to rent a boat and lose himself in the lush tropical islands that dotted the area, and let the fates send him where they may. Of course, the call from his mother had come in from the States instead, and here he found himself with nary a palm tree or a tropical ocean to soothe his soul.

In other words, he was broke and jobless. He'd been broke plenty of times. Joblessness was a new one.

Part of the problem was that he wasn't at all sure if he wanted to continue doing the types of assignments he had been doing most of his working life; political pieces, travel writing, even a few satirical pieces thrown in every now and then. Besides, the words needed to construct those types of pieces didn't come easily anymore, perhaps because he knew they were meant to sound like they were dashed off, stripped of all description save what was absolutely necessary to get the point across, and he increasingly found himself given to flights of fancy in his writing, though he sternly reminded himself that his words were starting to sound dangerously like creative non-fiction _,_ or worse, of  _fiction,_ of all the horrors in the world!

But even though fate had not cast Calvin into the wilds of the south Pacific seas as he'd planned, it didn't mean that she had nothing up her sleeve.

"I suppose I've got to go down and make an appearance," Calvin sighed as he lifted a t-shirt over his head. The unmistakable sounds of a sympathetic neighbor cooing to his mother in the hallway below meant another social visit had unexpectedly been forced upon the Haddocks.

Hobbes lay on the bed languidly behind him, having dug out one of Calvin's old comic books, which he was reading with only a little interest. "It's a small price to pay for all of the food that's been brought to this house, right?"

"Tuna fish casserole is your thing, buddy. Not mine," Calvin answered as he ran a hand through his hair. Over the past few days, most of the weirdness associated with talking to a sentient tiger had worn off. It gave him someone to talk to, anyway. "Don't suppose you'd care to join me?"

"There's a reason tigers are solitary creatures. If you'll notice, we only ever gather to hunt prey."

"Sounds like a good idea to me," Calvin muttered somewhat darkly as he exited the room, shutting the door behind him, and made his way downstairs to find Mrs. Horowitz, a large ancient creature from three doors down grasping tightly onto Abby's hand in the entry hall. A covered glass baking pan that smelt vaguely of chicken crowned a side table near the stairs.

"Oh, and here he is!" Mrs. Horowitz warbled, her three chins wobbling, as she smiled toothily at Calvin and extending her hand. Calvin took the massive paw in hand and shook it gingerly. "Why, I haven't seen you in – well, heavens,  _years_ and  _years,_ my dear. Tell me, are you still making crown moldings down in Charlestown?"

Calvin betrayed surprise for only a moment before sputtering, "I'm a freelance journalist, actually."

"Oh? What a thing! Journalists are  _freelance,_ you say?"

"Well, I've found that crime pays more, Mrs. Horowitz."

Mrs. Horowitz burst into giggles as though Calvin had said something monumentally witty. He now recalled that she often made wild guesses as to someone's profession, never having been particularly interested in others' successes, only failures. "Oh! That sense of humor. I remember now. My dear, I was  _so_ sorry to hear about your father.  _Forgive_ me for coming so late after I heard, but I just  _haven't_ had a moment before now."

"Don't worry about it, Mrs. Horowitz," Abby said with a polite smile. "We so appreciate the kindness everyone has shown us."

"Charlie – you know, my son Charlie? – oh, he has just had the busiest season. Two bestsellers in the last year, and he just  _hasn't_ had a moment to himself."

"Charlie is a writer?" Calvin asked with some surprise. As he remembered, Charlie Horowitz had been a geeky kid given to spittle-soaked treatises on the superiority of Star Trek over Star Wars. One of Calvin's favorite hobbies as a kid had been tormenting Charlie by pretending to not know the difference between the two.

"Charlie? Oh, heaven's  _no!"_ Mrs. Horowitz answered, placing a hand to her chest, as if having a writer for a son would be an abomination. "Charlie is a  _literary agent._ In  _New York_ you know. No, two of his clients just had books published this past year, and  _what_ do you know – both were on the bestseller's list! I always knew Charlie knew talent when he spotted it! I like to think I passed that onto him. Why, do you remember Abby, years ago, I said I just  _knew_ George Clooney would be a  _big star,_ back when hardly anyone knew who he was? I always know!"

Calvin had stopped listening to anything beyond "literary agent." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Charlie, yeah – yeah, he was a nice kid. It'd be good to catch up with him sometime. Shoot the breeze and all of that."

"Well, I don't know how long you're staying, Calvin – " here she threw Calvin a long look, " – after all, it's been what, a week and a half since the funeral? You must have to get back to Charlestown, I know. Charlie is coming down to visit his poor dear mother tomorrow. He tries to visit a few times a year when he can, such a sweet boy."

"Well – I'll be around for at least a few more days," Calvin said, perking up a bit. "If he's got time, send him around. I'll take him out for a beer. I'd like to hear about these bestsellers of his."

"Oh, you know, writers can talk all they want about talent – but it takes someone like  _Charlie_ to let their voice be heard, you know?"

Calvin bristled slightly at this.

"But naturally, Calvin, I'm  _sure_ he'd like to catch up with you. Here, I have his number," Mrs. Horowitz said, beginning to dig in her purse. A moment later she held up a business card triumphantly and handed it to him. "I try to give these out to any writers I meet. But I suppose you can have one, too!"

"Calvin  _is_ a writer," Abby pointed out gently.

"I thought you said he was a journalist? Journalists aren't writers, are they? At least not in the traditional sense. Oh, you know what I mean – no real craft for storytelling, I mean."

 _There are a few Pulitzer Prize Winners who'd take that up with you,_ Calvin thought to himself, suppressing a groan while reminding himself that Mrs. Horowitz had just handed him something that might help him get a job.

"Anyway, I must be off. Don't be a stranger, Calvin! Bye now!"

Mrs. Horowitz thusly handled, Abby and Calvin turned to each other.

"Crown molding?" Calvin cried.

"Charlestown?" Abby rejoined.

* * *

"Why the  _hell_ are my hands sweating?" Calvin demanded brusquely a few hours later as he sat up in the guest room with Hobbes. "Is it food poisoning from that atrocious thing in the glass dish Mrs. Horowitz deigned edible?"

"At least you got the chance to eat it hot," Hobbes grumped from the floor, where he lay looking up at Calvin pointedly.

"Hey look, it wasn't easy convincing Mom that I wanted seconds, and that I wanted to eat them in my room," Calvin reminded him. Charlie's business card sat on Calvin's knee, a ten digit phone number with a New York area code looking back up at him. Calvin sighed. "Hobbes, Charlie Horowitz was such a booger of a kid that I don't even know if I want to talk to him fifteen years later."

"I don't know if I could ever trust someone who honestly thought Jean-Luc Picard was a better captain than Han Solo anyway," Hobbes yawned, scratching his cheek. "Wonder if he's the kind of Trekkie that wears those little pointed ears in grocery stores and malls?"

Calvin shuddered. "I need a job, Hobbes. And it sounds like this guy has his foot in a few doors. Never know, right?"

"Would it really make any difference if you did?"

Throwing Hobbes a smirk, Calvin quickly dialed the number before he could think better of it. After three rings, a baritone voice answered and Calvin nearly stumbled over his words in presenting himself, hoping Charlie would remember him as a classmate in much the same social standing as he was back then, or at the very least a friendly acquaintance. After a few false starts, Charlie burst that  _of course_ he remembered Calvin Haddock, and  _how the hell are ya_ and  _whaddya been doin' with yourself, man?_ soon followed. Calvin broke the news about his father, and how he'd talked with Charlie's mother that same afternoon.

"And I just thought, hell, I'll give Charlie a call and see how he's doing, see if he wants to meet up for a drink when he gets here tomorrow."

"Well,  _hey_ partner, that sounds great! We've got a lotta catchin' up to do, eh? Yeah, sure man! Lissen, tomorrow night sounds great. I have a feelin' I'll need to get away from Mom for a while anyway, knowwhatimeanman? Ha!"

"That's – that's great, Charlie. Just stop on by here tomorrow, all right? Anytime's fine. I'll be here."

A few minutes later, after all pleasantries were exhausted, Calvin hung up the phone and stared at it for a moment. "Since  _when_ did Charlie Horowitz start calling people 'partner'? Or start speaking in elisions? Isn't living in New York supposed to eradicate stuff like that?"

"Maybe it's air pollution poisoning," Hobbes offered helpfully, having dug back into the stack of comic books.

"I've got a lot of work to do," Calvin muttered as he dug his laptop out of his bag for the first time since getting home.

"Like what?"

"Like writing something. I have to have some ideas to throw at this guy when the time's right."

"Great! I  _love_ writing stories!" Hobbes burst happily as he jumped into the chair next to where Calvin was seated at the desk. "We used to write stories all the time, remember?"

"Yeah, well, not like this," Calvin said hurriedly as he booted up his computer and opened a blank document. "This needs to be hard-hitting. Real-life. Gritty."

"Why?"

"Because that's what sells, Hobbes."

"How about those old Tracer Bullet stories we wrote, hm? Still have a few of those lying around somewhere?"

"No, no Hobbes – nothing like that."

"He was gritty, hard-hitting, no nonsense – "

"It isn't the same thing. Look. I don't need your help, all right?"

"Can I at least draw the pictures?"

Calvin scoffed. "That's the last thing I need. 'Illustrated by an imaginary tiger.'"

Hobbes protracted a sharp claw. "Care to wager on the imaginary part?"

Calvin shut the lid of his laptop in an annoyed manner. "Hobbes, I don't need your help. This is  _grown-up_ stuff, all right?"

"I don't know what's so great about this grown-up stuff you keep talking about," Hobbes sulked, crossing his arms in front of himself. "Just a lot of excuses as to why you  _have_ to do things you don't really want to do. You'd be better off writing about  _me."_

"Not gonna happen," Calvin said as he opened the lid and began to type furiously.

Hobbes watched him intently for a few moments, then went back to his stack of comic books. He could already tell this would be one of those all-nighter affairs Calvin was so fond of even in childhood.


	8. Chapter 8

At 4am the following morning, Susie dragged herself out of bed to get a drink of water. She'd dreamt of being lost in a desert, searching every rock crevice and sparse plant she'd run across for a few drops of water with no success. Finally, growing desperate in her fruitless searches, she stopped and looked up at the shimmering blue sky and thought,  _How did I even get here?_ and awoke in her bed a few seconds later. Lucid dreaming wasn't an uncommon occurrence for her; she'd also had many patients whose dreams were so horrific and intense that she'd taught them the basics of lucid dreaming, that is, making oneself aware that one was in a dream world and that nothing could hurt them there. Of course, realizing one was in a dream was the fastest way of waking up from one, which was certainly a useful trick to remember when the dream was nightmarish, or at the very least, as annoying as waking up from thirst.

She stumbled back to her bedroom after practically inhaling a glass of water from the bathroom tap and noticed somewhat groggily that a light was on in a room in the house directly across from hers and that she could hear soft strains of an old song from The Clash emitting from the open window. Curious, she opened the curtains slowly and stared through her window until her eyes adjusted to the light and she could see the figure of a young man hunched over a laptop in the house next to hers. What on earth was Calvin doing up so late (or so early, depending on how one looked at it)? She'd forgotten that their rooms were directly across from one another, and although she'd secretly spent more than a few lonely hours at this window in her teenaged years watching Calvin in his room, it wasn't something she was ready to admit to anyone.

His hair was wild, although that was hardly surprising. It always was when he felt he was onto a good idea, and had been that way even back when they were kids. Susie could always tell how deeply Calvin was nestled into an idea or a problem from the wildness quotient of his hair. From the way it was sticking up at all angles, she had to figure Calvin had hit upon an idea he wanted to get down on paper and that it probably meant he hadn't been to bed yet. Yawning, she pulled a stool nearer to the window to sit upon, surprising herself that she'd rather watch him than jump back in her warm bed and go back to sleep. Something about him was fascinating when he was creating; a wily look in his eye, or the slight twitch around his mouth when he'd thought of a clever turn of phrase. She laughed softly to herself when she realized that she hadn't seen him look this way since they were both still teenagers.

A spot of orange caught her eye and she peered behind Calvin to find his stuffed tiger perched on the bed behind him, as though Hobbes was keeping watch over Calvin. Laughing again, this time a little louder, it occurred to her that Calvin was a creature of habit, whether he was eight years old or twenty eight; his tiger still had to take part in all of his adventures, whatever they might be. While she supposed most women her age would find this to be, at the very least, a little odd for a man Calvin's age, since Susie had grown up with him, she saw it as more of a character quirk than anything strange or worrisome. Let him have his tiger. Who cared? It was just a mass of stitching and cloth, and what harm could that do?

As she sat there in the early morning stillness, her mind crept back to their childhood and how Calvin had always believed that Hobbes spoke with him and interacted with him, as an animate being might. More than that, Calvin had always acted slightly surprised when others could not see and hear things from Hobbes in the distinct way that he could. Imaginary friends weren't unusual for children, even vivid ones like Hobbes. If she remembered correctly, Calvin had finally outgrown that phase when he was ten, eleven perhaps – suddenly Hobbes was never with him anymore, and she stopped hearing stories about what "me and Hobbes" did that weekend. In fact, he'd seemed to have become entirely embarrassed of that portion of his life. She could understand distancing oneself from childhood during adolescence, as adolescence was all about finding one's way to adulthood, but now that he  _was_ an adult, Susie was unsure why he refused to talk about it. In some ways, she guessed it could be tied back to Calvin's father. David and Calvin had never gotten along particularly well, and their differences only increased as Calvin entered early adulthood, and perhaps Calvin saw Hobbes as a tie he'd had during the time of his life when his father's influence was the strongest. She supposed, if this was the case, that forsaking the memory of certain aspects of his childhood simply made the memories easier to bare.

Of course, she couldn't have been more wrong.

"This is a helluva lot harder than I remember it being," Calvin muttered to himself, stubbing out his umpteenth cigarette of the evening angrily in the bowl that was serving as his makeshift ashtray. He knew his mother would hit the roof when she discovered he was not only smoking inside her house, but also using some of her everyday dishware as an ashtray, but he always found it easier to write if he was smoking and thus the habit had never truly left him.

"Writing?" Hobbes asked, sitting on the bed behind him.

"Yeah," Calvin admitted in a somewhat disheartened voice. "I guess fiction was never really my forte to begin with. But I could always churn  _something_ out. This is like beating my head against a brick wall. Now would be a good time for one of those inspirational, philosophical quotes you used to throw at me all the time when I was a kid," Calvin said, turning slightly to look at Hobbes, raising an eyebrow. "Something mysterious and vaguely threatening."

"I'm too tired for philosophy," Hobbes said as he stifled a yawn. "And you're not writing anything worthwhile anyway."

"How do you know that?" Calvin demanded tiredly, lighting another cigarette and giving Hobbes a flat look. "You haven't read a word."

"Because I've spent the last ten hours watching you beat your head against a wall. Give it up, Calvin. The reason it's so difficult to write is that whatever you're writing isn't what you're meant to write."

"Now wait a minute." Calvin rose from his seat. "Who the hell are you to tell me what I can and can't write? You're a figment of my goddamned imagination."

"Not this again," Hobbes moaned, rolling over onto his side. "I'm only telling you the truth. And I offered to help, remember."

"Help from a stuffed tiger. I'm more far gone than I thought."

"I've  _always_ helped you."

"I'm not a confused little boy anymore, Hobbes."

"You're right. You're a confused adult."

"Christ, what  _is_ this? I'm trying to write something to get myself a  _job,_ you know, so that I can  _eat_ and  _have a place to live._ I don't need help from an imaginary friend for that."

"Fine." Hobbes rolled onto his stomach, settling into the bed. Calvin sighed loudly behind him and plopped down into the desk chair. In some ways, Calvin supposed Hobbes was right; his friend always  _had_ helped him. Hobbes had often been the only one who understood his strange ramblings, made-up games and obscure outlook on life. His parents had often viewed him as being an oddball, but Hobbes understood him and reciprocated. Calvin had sometimes thought that Hobbes was the only thing that had gotten him through his childhood.

But he still felt strange apologizing to someone who, in the eyes of the world, wasn't real. He supposed it only really mattered that Hobbes was real to  _him._

"Look, I'm sorry," Calvin said softly. "The last thing I need is for my only friend here to be mad at me. And…a good friend at that."

Hobbes' tail twitched. "You're a storyteller, Calvin. You just have to find the stories that resonate with you."

"Sure, I guess," Calvin conceded in an uncertain voice, standing up again. "I just don't know what those stories  _are_ yet."

Unseen by Calvin, Susie stared out of her window, trying to understand what she'd just seen. She tried to review the facts: Calvin appeared to have just had a heated conversation with an empty room. His facial expression had changed many times, indicating a back-and-forth conversation with Calvin reacting to the words of an unseen presence. She quickly scanned the desk and bed; even from her vantage point, she could easily see that no cell phone was present, meaning that he hadn't been having a late night conversation with someone on speakerphone. The lid of his laptop was now down, meaning he couldn't have been using voice communication with anyone over the internet. The light in his mother's bedroom was off, meaning he hadn't been shouting to her through the walls. And he'd kept looking at his bed, as though someone was there with whom he was carrying on a dialogue. In fact, the only thing on Calvin's bed was his stuffed tiger.

Susie's breath caught in her throat.

 _No, it couldn't be,_ she told herself sternly.  _Absolutely not. Calvin is an adult, and he – wait a minute._ Her mind darted back to the strange conversation they'd had a few days before, when Calvin had asked her opinion about "visions" his mother was supposedly having, complete with talking to things that weren't there. He'd stammered and stumbled his way through the discussion, and though she'd thought his behavior a little odd at the time, she certainly didn't think it was  _Hobbes_ Calvin had been talking about. She had thought it possible that he was having disturbing waking nightmares about his father, but she hadn't thought…no.

Was Calvin talking to  _Hobbes_ just now? As though Hobbes was a real person? Just as Calvin used to when he was a child?

Every professional instinct was begging her to investigate further. Although she'd had a few adult patients with imaginary friends, and all of those "friends" had been benevolent, she couldn't quite believe that someone she knew so well was still experiencing something like this. Often these imaginary friends filled some void in an adult's life, almost as a compensation for something that was missing, or else helping to guide the person towards some realization about themselves.

Although she knew she wouldn't be able to get back to sleep, Susie left her vigil at the window and crept back into bed, pulling the covers over her mechanically. Resolving to find an appropriate time and place to broach the subject with Calvin, she stared up at the ceiling until sunrise.

* * *

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

* * *

"So…uh, what do you think?" Calvin croaked nervously, fiddling with the fork to his left on the table. He wiped his forehead quickly with the back of his hand, throwing wild looks at the other customers at the restaurant where he and Charlie had met for lunch the next day. Across from him, the crease-strewn face of Charlie Horowitz studied a few pages of story ideas Calvin had worked on through the night in anticipation of this meeting.

"Hm," Charlie answered noncommittally, his eyes not leaving the small type in front of him. Calvin bit his lip.

After a half an hour of pleasant ribbing and catching up, Calvin and Charlie had gotten down to what they both knew was the reason for their meeting. Charlie had known that Calvin made his living as a journalist, and had even read quite a few of Calvin's pieces in magazines, but hadn't expected to meet Calvin again in the town where they'd both grown up, and hadn't expected to spend his weekend at home being pitched to by a former classmate. In fact, he hadn't even known that Calvin was interested in writing fiction, as a good non-fiction writer could still generally find their way in the world, but as Calvin had timidly passed his story premises towards Charlie, he couldn't help but feel he had at least some obligation to Calvin to at least _look_ at his ideas.

And, from the blurbs in front of him, Charlie could say with confidence that  _looking_ would be all he'd be doing.

"Very interesting," Charlie concluded after a few moments, setting down the papers gently on the side of the table. "Real hardline stuff, huh?"

"I wanted to capture the gritty details of real life," Calvin answered in what he hoped was a confident voice. "The real hardships and tribulations of everyday people. I want my characters to speak to people in the world that they understand."

"I see," Charlie said slowly, running his finger around the top of his water glass. "Bankruptcy, foreclosure, death, devastation, stuff like that, eh?"

"Something like that, sure. Look Charlie, I'm used to working on a schedule. I'm used to cranking stuff out on a deadline. And I know the world around me. If you could just get my foot in the door with a publisher – "

Charlie held a hand up to stop him. "Calvin, I like you, man. So I'm going to be straight with you. Can I be straight with you?"

Inwardly, Calvin's heart sank. He put on a stern face. "Go for it."

Charlie sighed. "Look, I've got a hundred guys who are used to working on a schedule and who can hit deadlines. I've got another hundred guys who think they know all about the real world and how awful they think it is, and who are eager to write about it, as though it'll justify their lives to themselves or something. It doesn't take any particular talent to do any of that, only some discipline and observation skills. It works great for journalism. But fiction is different. The world is inside your head, not outside of it. You've got a great imagination; I remember that much from when we were kids. Fiction is an escape; it doesn't  _have_ to be real, that's what is so great about it. You wanna know the bestselling books I've represented? Books that have no real basis in reality. Look, if you want to write gritty, that's fine. No one's going to stop you. But probably no one's going to publish you, either. Come back to me when you have a unique idea. Something that hasn't been done before, or at least hasn't been done well. Until then – "

"You can't tell me there's no market for this kind of stuff," Calvin said, tapping the volume of papers on the table. "I've been a writer for over a decade, and I've sold stuff exactly like this."

"And how much have you sold  _lately?"_

Calvin looked at him steadily. Charlie sighed again.

"See, that's what I mean. If you want to write fiction, it can't be the same type of stuff you've been writing. There's a glut of that kind of stuff on the market now, and most of them are big names. I'm looking for something unique. Maybe it was silly of me to think I could expect something like that from you, I dunno – "

"Well, like what?"

"Well, hell, I don't know. You're the writer, not me. Is this all you've got?" Charlie asked in a tone bordering on exasperation.

Calvin took a deep breath and looked at the diners around him, trying to think of the kind of story they'd like to get lost in. The real world  _was_ gritty. It  _was_ hard-hitting. And sometimes, it _was_ depressing. Part of him understood the need for some escape, for something to lift the soul and create a world that was perhaps a little kinder than it actually was.

"There's – there's this one other idea I've got…" Sweat began to drip down his back.

Charlie leaned forward slightly in anticipation. "…well?"

"Well, it's…" Calvin swallowed hard. The room began to spin slowly. He kept his gaze on the table. "It's…it's about this little kid. And he isn't quite like any of the other little kids. This little kid sees the world a little differently."

"…and?"

"And…and…he's got this one friend. But the friend…well, the friend isn't real, at least, he isn't real to anyone but this little kid. His friend is a stuffed tiger, but when no one else is around, this stuffed tiger…this tiger comes to life. And it's a real tiger, with fangs and claws and fur. And they have…adventures. They visit other worlds, other countries. They fight aliens and monsters. They travel through time. All in their own minds. And really…they create their own little world to live in, because the world they live in isn't always so easy for them. So they rely on each other. And…and this tiger…this tiger is practically the little kid's whole world. They create the worlds they live in, but those worlds aren't home without the tiger." Calvin swallowed again. "And the tiger illustrates all of the stories."

Charlie was silent for a moment and Calvin began planning how he could spin it all as having been a big joke in order to save face, until Charlie muttered, "Actually, that's not bad."

Calvin's eyes widened. "What, really?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it's a little rough around the edges still, but…well, it might work. Yeah. Kind of a cute premise. Could be a kid's story, but if you spun it in the right way, it could appeal to adults too."

Calvin sat up straighter and took a swig of water from the glass in front of him. "Well, it sounded a little silly in my head."

"Nah, silly's good. Unique silliness is even better. You want to know what the most-downloaded e-book in the world is?  _Alice in Wonderland._ It was also the very  _first_ e-book in the world. That says something right there, doesn't it? Out of all the choices in the world, a children's story about a little girl falling into another world meeting with all sorts of outlandish characters is the most popular e-book in the world. So don't get down on yourself if an idea sounds silly. People  _like_ silly." Charlie picked up the tab from the table in front of them, taking out his credit card. Somehow he knew Calvin probably wasn't flush with cash at the moment. "Look, I'll be here until Wednesday, then I've got to head back. Write down some of these adventures and get them to me before then. I'll take a look and tell you what I think. If it's good – well, maybe we can talk about doing a little business."

"You'd – you'd represent me?" Calvin asked. This was all happening so quickly. He'd never even written about the adventures he and Hobbes had had, but at least he had plenty of material to work from.

Charlie smiled at him. "If I like what I see, the possibilities are endless."

"I'll – I'll start working on it right away," Calvin promised as they both rose from the table. "I'll get you a story or two as soon as I can."

"And make sure the tiger illustrates the stories, eh?" Charlie said with a laugh and a wink as he shook Calvin's hand before they parted outside the restaurant. "That's a pretty cute idea, tiger illustrating the stories. We could co-author him; the public would  _love_ that."

"All right. Thanks, Charlie!" Calvin called after him as he walked away from the restaurant. He needed some time to clear his head before trying to put pen to paper. Ignoring other people on the sidewalk and dodging bicycles as best he could, Calvin turned the conversation with Charlie over in his head. Before long, as always, he found himself back in his woods, sitting on a log, staring up into the trees and wondering what in the hell he'd just gotten himself into.


	9. Chapter 9

Susie shut the door to her mother's room quietly, careful not to make the pictures hanging on the wall in the hallway rattle. Her mother was nearly asleep now and Susie felt she probably had at least a few hours to herself to begin cooking dinner. Sighing and descending the steps soundlessly, Susie realized for the umpteenth time that although she did not mind caring for her stricken mother, the duties associated with being the sole caregiver of someone suffering from multiple sclerosis in combination with trying to keep a house running smoothly was no small feat for one person. Though she refused to admit it, Susie was exhausted all the time.

Digging several red potatoes out of a sack in the pantry, Susie took them to the sink and began to scrub them under cool water from the tap, her mind wandering. She'd never forget that day when, as a sixteen year old, she'd received the news of her mother's diagnosis. Suddenly all of the symptoms that Delia (Susie's mother) had suffered for many years made sense – the blurry vision (which no eyeglasses could ever mitigate), the muscle stiffness that would render Delia incapacitated for days on end, the numbness of certain portions of her body, attacks of vertigo, and a hundred more on top of those. They'd discovered that MS sufferers often had these "relapses" as they were called, and then months or years could pass along normally with no symptoms whatsoever. Susie's parents had divorced almost before Susie was old enough to walk, and Susie hadn't seen much of her father since, as he'd gone on and started another family, seeming to forget about his former family entirely. For years, Susie had carried deep resentment towards her father for his actions, but had gradually made peace with it. Until her mother's health began to decline rapidly a few years ago, that is.

Delia wasn't an old lady. At sixty-three, most women her age were still enjoying their hobbies and their lives after children had left the nest. Delia hadn't been so lucky. She'd talked to Susie every week on the phone after Susie had graduated and moved to Baltimore, and though she always downplayed her relapses, she couldn't hide from the truth forever: she was in the final stages of MS. Despite having stayed active, eating a healthy diet, and taking as much treatment as was available for MS (which was sizable compared to only a few decades ago), her form of MS was a particularly virulent one, and before long Delia found it nearly impossible to do the things one needed to do simply to live their life – go grocery shopping, getting dressed, walking up or down stairs, things that most people took for granted. Delia resisted her daughter's insistence to come and look after her, but before long, she faced the prospect of living her last years in a nursing facility, and finally relented.

Susie knew that her mother wished with every fiber of her ill being that things could be different. Like any parent, Delia wanted Susie to have her own life and spend her younger years developing her career and hobbies, perhaps even getting married and starting a family if she so wished. But Susie, an only child, knew that she'd never forgive herself if she didn't help her mother, and so had come home.

That didn't mean that the past few years had been easy. If running a household and playing nurse to an ailing loved one wasn't stressful enough, watching her mother literally waste away in front of her eyes despite all of Susie's dedicated administrations of various treatments and medications was enough to almost completely drain all of Susie's emotional reserves. But still, every day Susie got up and spent the day taking care of the house and her mother.

Susie retrieved a small knife from the drawer next to the sink. Delia couldn't chew very well anymore, her jaw muscles having nearly given out, but she could normally manage a few potatoes if they were cooked long enough to make them very soft. When she had a night to herself and didn't have to cook for her mother, Susie found herself picking foods simply for how tough they were to chew, almost as if her own jaw longed to be used to do what it was made to do.

After throwing together a stew and leaving it to simmer for a few hours, Susie went outside to cut a few flowers to put in her mother's room. She was surprised to see Calvin emerging from the woods behind their houses, looking deep in thought. She turned away, hoping he wouldn't spot her, as she was still upset about the difficulties her mother was having that afternoon. Nevertheless, thirty seconds later she heard someone plopping down on the wood of the deck.

"How's it going, Derkins?" a jovial voice spoke.

"About as well as it can, Haddock," she responded, not looking up from the flowerbed where she knelt.

"That doesn't sound too cheerful," Calvin observed, laying down flat on his back on the deck. "I guess it would all depend on the possible environmental disturbances that could conceivably occur at this precise moment in time. For instance, it  _could_ be going about as well as a full-scale nuclear invasion by extraterrestrials from another galaxy hell-bent on acquiring Earth for their trophy room, or it  _could_ be going as well as a freak electrical storm burning down the entire city except for the electric power plant."

"Always the subjectivist, you are."

"Tell me about it. Hey, know who I had lunch with today?" Calvin rolled over on his side to face Susie. "Charlie Horowitz. Remember him? Kind of a weenie kid, spit a lot when he was talking?"

"Vaguely. Did he spit on your lunch?"

"No, but he did pick up the tab. He's a literary agent. Of all things! Can you imagine that? Charlie Horowitz, rubbing shoulders with famous writers in New York!"

"Ah, so  _that's_ what you were up to last night," Susie said with a smirk as she rose to her feet. "I got up in the middle of the night to get a drink and saw you typing away on your laptop."

"Never took you for a drinker, Derkins," Calvin teased, raising an eyebrow.

Susie rolled her eyes. "A drink of  _water._ Throw some story ideas at him, did you?"

"Well, why not?" Calvin sat up and put his arms around his knees. "To tell you the truth, I don't have much going on right now, job wise. Figured it couldn't hurt to give it a shot."

Susie sat down next to him, taking off her gardening gloves and laying them down beside her. "No one could every say you don't seize an opportunity when you see one. How'd it go?"

Calvin suddenly got very quiet and stared off in the direction towards the woods. "He hated what I wrote."

Susie patted him on the knee sympathetically. "Don't worry about it, Calvin."

"…but he loved a few of my ideas," Calvin said quietly, rubbing his chin. "Actually he…he wants me to write a few stories about me and Hobbes. You know, from when I was a kid."

"Really?" Susie asked, giving him a surprised look. "Sounds interesting." She rubbed some dirt off of the toe of her shoe and decided to bring up a subject she'd been thinking about all day, aside from her mother. "Hey Calvin, did your mom ever stop seeing those visions?"

Calvin went rigid. "Oh. Oh those. Oh, I don't think they're anything to worry about, Susie."

"It's just you were pretty worried last week – "

"Yeah, it's fine. She's ok, Susie, really."

"It was you, wasn't it?" she asked gently, giving him a careful look. "You were seeing the visions."

Calvin didn't meet her eye. "I don't know what you're talking about, Derkins."

"Calvin, last night when I saw you through your window, you were talking to someone."

Calvin's heart skipped a beat and a slight sweat broke out on his brow.

"And it looked like you were having a conversation. But there wasn't anyone in the room with you."

"Sometimes I just talk to myself. A lot of people do that."

"But you looked like you were reacting to things someone was saying, like you would in a conversation. Your facial expressions changed. So did your body language." Susie bit her lip. "It's Hobbes, isn't it? You're seeing Hobbes again."

Calvin leapt up, almost as if he were dodging a bullet. "Wh-What? Hobbes? The tiger? Susie – "

Susie gave Calvin a solemn look. "Calvin, you can talk to me about this, you know. I'm not going to try and diagnose you, or think you're crazy. I just want to know that you're all right."

"And if I told you that I'd been talking to a stuffed tiger, you'd really think I was 'all right'?" Calvin asked, crossing his arms in front of himself.

Susie shrugged. "Maybe there are worse things in the world than talking to an old friend, Calvin. Be they stuffed or an old childhood friend who lives right next door to you, like me."

Calvin studied Susie carefully for a moment, seeming to weigh his options. Finally, he sunk down again next to her on the deck. "It was the night after you and I went out. I came back and…and there he was. Just like he had been when I was a kid. Walking, talking – just the same. For a few days I thought I was losing my mind. It was good to see him again, I won't lie. I guess…I guess I've been sort of a lonely person for a long time, and it felt good to see a friend again. And so I just got used to it – talking to him, I mean. It isn't as strange now as it was a few days ago." He turned to Susie slowly. "So do you think I'm crazy?"

She shrugged again. "I don't know."

"Is that your professional opinion, Dr. Derkins?"

She smiled. "I guess it hasn't hurt anything, has it? You're more tolerable now than you were when you first came home at any rate. And now you might have a shot at getting published with some of the adventures you two used to have. That all counts for something, doesn't it?"

A loud rumble made them both turn to find the sky behind them was rapidly becoming darker from clouds heavy with rain. Susie grabbed Calvin's arm, sending a little jolt of electricity through him, and led him wordlessly into the house just as the first drops began to fall.

"Can I get you something to drink?"

"That's all right, I should probably be getting home."

"Just stay for a while. Rain never lasts long this time of year."

As Susie disappeared into the kitchen to get them each something to drink, Calvin wandered around the downstairs area, looking carefully at everything. He hadn't been in this house since – well, since he was a kid, he guessed. He and Susie had sometimes played together as children in this house, and he'd had to stay here a few times when his parents weren't home, but he hadn't stepped foot inside since he was eleven or twelve. Everything looked almost exactly the same as he remembered, right down to the creepy doll collection that Delia insisted on keeping in the formal living room. When he was very young, and had only just met Hobbes, he'd sometimes tried to talk to other stuffed animals or dolls, wondering if Hobbes was an isolated incident or if Calvin was capable of talking to all toys. He'd quickly found that Hobbes was, at least to him, unique in every way, and that the glassy eyes of dolls and other stuffed toys were just that – stitches, bits of plastic, and cloth.

Susie found him and handed him a glass of lemonade as they both sat on the couch, gazing out the window at the rain.

"How's your mom, Susie?" he asked in a hushed voice, throwing a quick look at the stairs.

She made a valiant attempt at a smile and failed. "She's…she's holding her own, I guess."

"I always liked your mom," Calvin admitted as he took a sip of his lemonade. "I remember when we were in high school and we all found out about her diagnosis. Can't imagine going through that so young. It must have been a helluva difficult thing to come to grips with."

"It's difficult now," Susie declared honestly. "And 'coming to grips with it' is more of an ongoing process rather than just something you get used to right away. You come to grips with your mother not being able to go for her morning jog anymore. Then you come to grips with her not being able to climb steps, and come to grips when she can't feed herself anymore. Then you try to come to grips with the fact that, like it or not, this is going to kill her and there's nothing you can do about it."

They were both silent for a moment, the only noise in the room being the gentle sound of the ceiling fan humming in its rotations and the soft patter of rain outside. A strange feeling Calvin hadn't experienced in what felt like a lifetime was gnawing at him in the back of his mind. He pondered it for a moment before realizing that it was empathy. Sympathy. Sadness for a person other than himself. He'd shut himself off to those emotions years ago, when the worst of his problems with his parents had first begun to truly rage, because they were too difficult to bear when he felt like his own emotions were more than enough for him to handle, let alone taking on someone else's. He didn't consider himself a callous person necessarily, but perhaps, he had been too uninterested in others' pain for far too long. It struck him that was perhaps the reason for his loneliness, and for his lack of close friends for many years; the secret to close relationships lay in the sharing of emotions, be they positive or negative, and if one party was entirely uninterested in the other's emotions, when one's own emotions always trumped another's, trust and comradeship could never be built. Suddenly, more than anything he wanted in the entire world was simply to be a friend – a real friend – to Susie.

"I'm so sorry," he murmured in a soft voice, a few tears even coming to his eyes as he realized the burden Susie had been carrying for so long with very few people to share it with. "Susie, I – I should have been there for you…I should have been a better friend – "

"It's all right, Calvin," she muttered in strained voice.

"No, no it isn't," Calvin responded, sitting up a little higher. "I've been so caught up in myself these past couple of weeks, I had no idea – Susie, I'm so sorry. I can't offer you any advice. But I can listen."

Before he knew it, Susie's face had crumpled and a low sob escaped her exhausted form, and Calvin instinctively drew his friend into an embrace. For the next few minutes, not a word was spoken as Susie wept quietly into his shoulder. He didn't have much experience with grieving friends, as he usually tried to escape before strong emotions reared their ugly heads, but for the first time in a long time, he felt that he was exactly where he was supposed to be and doing exactly what he needed to be doing. He held onto her gently as she spilled all of her sorrows, her anxieties, and her anger. He listened as she told him what it was like to watch one's mother die a slow and painful death, to be a witness to something so foreign between a mother and a daughter, how angry she was that her father didn't seem to care that his former wife and the mother of his eldest child was slowly slipping away, and how guilty she felt about feeling so angry sometimes about the life she felt she was missing out on. She also hadn't wanted to burden anyone else with these feelings and thus rarely spoke of them, even to close friends and family. He was correct in admitting that he had no advice to give – and really, who did in such situations? – but by the end, he felt a bit like crying himself.

"Your mother was always kind to me, even when she didn't have a reason to be," he reminisced quietly, rubbing Susie's back softly. "Her life hasn't gone unlived, or unnoticed. She singlehandedly raised one of the best human beings I've ever met – you."

Susie sniffed. "Thank you, Calvin. Oh, I've gotten your sleeve all wet – "

He studied her red face, swollen with tears, and gave her a smile. "It's only a sleeve, it'll dry."

An ancient looking feline suddenly jumped into his lap, gave him an ornery meow, and began to lick its foot.

"That's Gretchen," Susie said, grabbing a Kleenex from the coffee table and drying her eyes. "And I think she likes you."

"This is the namesake of your comet, eh?" Calvin laughed quietly and stroked the cat, who began to purr.

"It was only a  _small_ comet."

"Well, maybe it'll grow up into a  _big_ comet." Calvin swooped the cat into his arms and rubbed his cheek on Gretchen's back. "Susie's baby comet. Hey, if the comet is anything like you when you were a kid, it's going to get straight A's in comet school, it's going to beat all the other comets at their games, and will be able to lob the biggest, slushiest snowballs in the universe at the boy comet who lives next door."

Susie managed a shaky laugh, still dabbing her eyes. "So what's going to be the first adventure with Hobbes you'll write about?"

Calvin shrugged slightly. "Not sure."

"Maybe you should ask him."

He gave her a look. "You're really ok with the fact that you're sitting next to someone who sees and speaks to imaginary tigers?"

"Calvin, you did it for the first ten years of your life, too. It never bothered me then."

"Yeah, but kids do strange things and no one thinks anything of it. It's just part of being a kid. It's a little different when you're an adult."

"Look, all I know is that he seems to be helping you somehow. It is unorthodox, I realize that. But you and I have so many other things going on in our lives that I, for one, am not going to begrudge anything benevolent that helps us deal with things."

Calvin watched the rain outside carefully, his arms crossed in front of him. "Want to know what I've realized?" he asked quietly.

"What?"

"I realize I should have never given Hobbes up."

They both sat in silence for a few moments. Rumbles of thunder echoed outside in the warm spring weather and a clock ticked somewhere in the kitchen.

"I remember it so well. The night before my eleventh birthday, I was up in my room with Hobbes playing alien invaders. Hobbes was the alien with three heads, I was the dashing scientist hero who had made it his mission to destroy the alien life forms after they'd begun to attack Earth. There was a knock on my door and Dad came in wanting to talk." Calvin bit his lip. "He told me that when I turned eleven, things were going to start to change. I was going to stop wanting to play with toys so much, I was going to start seeing the world a little different, and I might even start to notice girls as something other than just possessors of cooties. It all sounded so strange to me. If aliens  _had_ invaded at that moment, it couldn't have been any weirder than how I felt at his words. I couldn't imagine feeling any different about things than I always had. He also told me that eleven year olds don't have imaginary friends. They don't play with imaginary tigers, and that if they did, they'd get harassed at school, no one would want to be friends with them. Now, I didn't have any friends other than Hobbes anyway. I guess I wanted friends – kids do – but they weren't interested in the same things, and hell, they weren't as much fun as Hobbes, so I had always figured, why bother? But Dad made it sound like I would be bullied mercilessly as a social outcast. Maybe I would have. I don't know. But it was a serious enough talk that it shook me to my core. For the very first time, I started to wonder if Hobbes would always be with me. I started to think that if I wanted to be an adult, it meant I had to leave Hobbes behind. Dad kept telling me that eleven means you have to grow up some, that it was time for me to stop playing with Hobbes. He didn't force me, of course, but made it pretty clear that he and Mom were worried that I wouldn't make any new friends if I always had Hobbes with me. I don't know if that's true or not. Looking back on it, maybe it wouldn't have made a difference. But that night I kept looking at Hobbes and thinking that Dad was right. I don't know if he was, but when you're ten, your parents are always right, right? When I woke up the next morning, Hobbes was just a stuffed tiger. He didn't speak, didn't come alive like he had. My eleventh birthday was the worst day of my life, Susie. I lost the best friend I ever had that day."

"I guess I'm starting to understand a little of that resentment towards your Dad."

Calvin swiveled to look at her. "Hey, you're right. I've never pinpointed it before, but that's when the real problems started. And they never went away. I don't think my Dad realized what he was doing to me that day. I know he was only doing what he felt was best…but it was one of the most painful experiences of my life."

Susie reached over and grasped Calvin's hand, holding it tightly. Calvin found he couldn't take his eyes off of it. She smiled. "I think you need to talk to your mom about a few things, Calvin."

Calvin sighed. "I think you're right."


	10. Chapter 10

When the rain lessened its intensity momentarily, Calvin darted back to his house from Susie's, using his light jacket draped over his head in lieu of an umbrella. As he jogged up to the back door, he caught a glimpse of a male form in the kitchen. The light from the inside was bright and strong compared with the hazy darkness of the outdoors where Calvin stood, and as the man inside turned towards Calvin, his face seemed almost luminescent in the clear light of the kitchen. With some surprise, Calvin noted that it was Victor, one of his father's best friends and someone that Calvin had known his entire life.

Victor was talking animatedly, and Calvin peered inside further to see his mother sitting at the kitchen table, listening closely. A flare of anger rose up in Calvin but died away in almost the same instant, leaving a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. Calvin pushed open the back door and entered, stamping his feet pointedly on the welcome mat to both rid his shoes of rain and to signal his arrival.

Abby jumped up. "Calvin, there you are! Where have you been?"

"I got caught in the rain, Mom. I waited it out at Susie's."

"I see," Abby said as she took Calvin's coat and spread it across the washer to let it dry. "You remember Victor?"

"Sure." Calvin shook Victor's hand and attempted a smile. Victor was taller than David had been, and had always sported at least a moustache, and sometimes a beard, while David had always been clean shaven. His hair was a dark brown, almost black, and his eyes were a deep brown color which, as a child, Calvin had found almost mesmerizing in their warmth.

Victor and David had met in college, and shared an apartment while they went to law school together. Though they had worked in different cities, it wasn't at all unusual for Calvin to see Vic at least a couple of times a month, as Vic and his father went to baseball games together or went on day-long bike rides through the deepest parts of the countryside, leaving early in the morning and returning hungry but exhilarated right before Calvin went to bed at night. Victor and his wife had even spent several Christmases with the Haddocks, until Victor's wife Sadie, who Calvin only vaguely remembered as having long hair and a gap-toothed smile, passed away suddenly almost twenty years earlier. Victor had never remarried.

Victor smiled affectionately at Calvin. "A hand shake. You really  _are_ grown up, buddy. I thought I'd at least get a hug."

"I have to keep up appearances, I guess."

"Oh, baloney!" Victor laughed as he pulled Calvin into a bear hug. "The older you get the more you look like your dad, partner." He patted Calvin on the back and then let him go, his expression turning serious. "Calvin, I'm so sorry I missed the funeral. I wanted to be here, I tried – "

"It's ok, Vic – "

"You and your mom can tell me that all you want, but it wasn't right," Victor sighed, clasping his hands behind his back and beginning to pace in the kitchen. "I knew David for thirty years, Calvin. Over thirty, in fact. He was always one of my closest friends, even from the start. If it hadn't been for the conference in Switzerland – I tried to get out of it, I did. But I couldn't make it back in time." He sighed again and looked at Calvin. "I'm so sorry, buddy. I should have been here. But I can be here now."

Again the surge of anxiety and anger flashed instantaneously, but Calvin swallowed it. "Thanks for coming now, Vic. Dad would have understood."

"Hey, I'll always be around for you, Calvin," Victor said, patting Calvin on the shoulder. "I never had any kids of my own, so I've always considered you guys family. You ever need anything, you call."

"Sure thing."

Calvin and Abby saw Victor out, waving to him as he got into his car and sped away.

"Victor and I have had the loveliest afternoon," Abby said, smiling as she took off her earrings in the mirror of the hallway. "We had a nice lunch and then went and walked through our old neighborhood. Do you remember that house, Calvin? Oh, it was so long ago. It's when we lived across the street from Vic and Sadie, remember?"

"Not much," Calvin admitted, keeping his eyes locked on the small blue dot in the distance that was Victor's car.

"We moved here when you were four, so I'm not surprised. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. I hadn't seen him for nearly two months, your dad had been so busy..." Abby trailed off, moving back into the kitchen to tidy up before dinner.

"I want you to be careful around that guy, Mom," Calvin remarked over his shoulder.

"Vic? Why?"

"He's always had a thing for you. And now that Dad's gone, he's going to try to move in on you, that's why," Calvin replied, turning to meet his mother's eye. "I remember even as a kid knowing that that guy had a thing for you."

"Victor? Don't be ridiculous, Calvin!"

Calvin walked towards her. "Haven't you ever noticed the way that guy looks at you? Looks like he wants to sweep you off your feet and ride into the sunset or something. I think Dad knew it too."

"Calvin,  _please._ If your father had thought that Victor was interested in me, he wouldn't have spent so much time with Victor. They wouldn't have been best friends."

"Only because Dad knew Victor wouldn't actually try anything. You're right, they were best friends, and Vic wouldn't have ever tried anything when Dad was around. But now that Dad's gone? It's a whole new day."

"You're being silly," Abby said as she walked back into the kitchen.

"I don't think I am," Calvin answered as he followed her. "Look Mom, he's a nice guy. But I don't think his interest in you is purely platonic."

"And so what if it isn't?" Abby said so quietly that Calvin wasn't sure he'd heard her correctly.

"Wait, what?"

"So what if it isn't?" Abby repeated, picking up a sponge and beginning to scrub down the counter. "Calvin, I loved your father. He was the love of my life, and it will take me a long time to come to terms with losing him so quickly. I miss the hell out of him, and I probably always will. There's nothing I can do to change that. But I'm not going to close myself off to the world and to new possibilities because David is gone. I will  _not_ be that sort of widow, Calvin. My life is not over, and I refuse to act like it is."

Calvin stared at her, jaw agape. "I can't even believe what I'm hearing. Dad's been dead for all of two weeks and you're already thinking about replacing him?"

"Calvin!" Abby burst angrily. Calvin was startled; he hadn't heard her use that tone since he was a kid getting into any kind of trouble he could find. Her eyes burned. "Your father – my husband – my  _David –_ can never be replaced. Even though he's gone, I will always love him. And right now, I am simply uninterested in any kind of romance. I won't be interested in a long time. But there will come a day when I'm ready for that sort of companionship again."

"Mom!" Calvin erupted.

"Calvin." Abby stopped scrubbing momentarily, looking at Calvin steadily. "I may be your mother, but I'm as human as you are, and I'm in as much a state of flux as you are. Our world just changed and neither of us is exactly sure what our future will look like. But the last thing that either of us should do right now is make finite decisions that aren't based in this new reality. I know children – even adult children – only ever really see their parents as parents, but if you're ever a parent yourself, you'll understand that there are many different dimensions of who you are as a person and 'parent' is only one part, albeit an important part, of who you are. There are a lot of other dimensions as well. Your dad knew that too." Abby threw the sponge back into the sink and faced the window above the sink. "No one else knew David as well as you and I did. Not even Victor. But there's a connection there. Does that make sense? Both Victor and I loved your father. In different ways, of course, but there are a lot of types of love." She turned back to face him. "Calvin, you know that your father loved you, don't you?"

Calvin sat down – or rather, collapsed – into one of the kitchen chairs, holding his head in his hands. Things were moving much too quickly. The world of his childhood and adulthood was colliding, becoming obscured in their connectedness, blurring boundaries and lines he didn't even know had existed within him. "Did he?" Calvin whispered. "Is that the truth, Mom?"

"Of course it is," Abby said, walking quickly to her son and running her fingers through his hair, a pained look on her face. It was the first time she'd seen Calvin show an emotion other than anger since he came home, and she was relieved. "Even on your worst days, Calvin, your father loved you with everything he had in him."

 _Everything he had in him._ What an odd phrase, Calvin thought. He sighed. "Why did he make me get rid of Hobbes?" he asked quickly, wanting to get the question out before his nerve deserted him.

Abby stopped stroking his hair for a moment, taken aback by the seemingly random question. "Get rid of – Hobbes? What do you mean? Isn't Hobbes upstairs?"

"No, Mom, I mean – I mean..." Calvin got up and walked to the windows, where he leaned against the sash and stared out at the drizzle. "Why did you and Dad insist I stop playing with Hobbes? I mean, how did you come to that decision?"

Abby shrugged slightly, trying to gather her thoughts and remember that time. It seemed like it had happened a century ago. "Well, Calvin, I guess...I guess we thought it was just time. It's fine to have imaginary friends when you're a kid, but we thought it was time for you to start making real friends your own age." She sat down in the chair that Calvin had abandoned. "And, also, we thought the other children might start to make fun of you for still playing with Hobbes, and we didn't want to see that happen."

Calvin made an exasperated sound and shifted his weight without looking back at her. "Mom, I'd been playing with Hobbes for five years by that point. I was  _already_ made fun of by the other kids."

"Your father and I thought it would only get worse as you went to junior high, Calvin. We weren't trying to make your life miserable, I promise," she finished in a slightly bemused voice.

Calvin clenched his fist and set his jaw, his back turned to Abby. "Are you sure that's the only reason?"

Abby considered for a moment before replying, "Yes. Why wouldn't it be? What is this all about, Calvin? Why are you asking me about Hobbes, of all things?"

He licked his lips and continued gazing out at the rain silently for a few seconds, his mind desperately trying to translate thought into speech. "Did you...did you and Dad ever notice that my problems with you guys got a whole lot worse after I stopped playing with Hobbes?"

"We noticed your oncoming adolescence, if that's what you mean. You started becoming a teenager. A rather over-the-top moody and rowdy teenager, but a teenager nonetheless."

"But it was more than that, wasn't it?" Calvin said, turning to face his mother again. "At least, for Dad it was. He always wanted a son who was a miniature version of him, and Hobbes was standing in the way of Dad having my complete attention. Hobbes spent more time with me than Dad did, had more of an influence on me than Dad did, and Dad knew it, and wanted to stop it."

"Calvin, that is totally untrue," Abby said, rising to her feet.

"Then what?"

Abby shrugged, somewhat angrily. "I'm sorry that you feel we did a bad job in raising you, but all parents do the best they can for their children and we were no different."

"And we see how well that worked out," Calvin muttered as he began to walk away. Abby caught his sleeve and held him in place.

"Calvin, wait. Look, there's something we should talk about."

"Why?" he demanded, trying to gently pry himself away from his mother's grip.

"Because your father never could."

Calvin froze and looked up at his mother slowly. She had a strained, odd look on her face. "He wanted to, Calvin. But your father wasn't the type who could articulate it."

He studied her carefully for a moment before following her lead and sitting down in one of the kitchen chairs. Abby sighed and tucked a strand of graying hair behind her right ear.

"When you get to be our age, you tend to take stock of your life, and your dad was no different. One of David's biggest regrets was that he didn't spend more time with you. He told me so, on several occasions, over the past few years," she began in a low voice. "And we knew that that was why Hobbes was so real to you. David just wasn't around; he was too busy working hard to give us a nice life. It didn't occur to him until years later that a better life doesn't necessarily mean nicer cars or exotic vacations, that maybe it just means being around on a sunny afternoon to play catch with your son, or make his favorite meal, or help him with homework. Maybe...maybe it just means that you're a good enough presence in your son's life that he doesn't need any imaginary friends."

Calvin swallowed hard, not taking his eyes from his mother's face.

"David felt terrible that Hobbes was obviously filling some emotional void within you that he couldn't. When he asked you to stop playing with Hobbes, it wasn't because he was jealous or angry. He knew that you, just like everyone your age, were about to embark on a greater journey, that you were about to begin the process of becoming an adult. He just wanted to be there for that, Calvin. He was excited to see what sort of man you'd turn out to be, and all he wanted was to be a part of that process. And he couldn't do that unless Hobbes took a backseat in your life."

"But if Dad asked me to stop playing with Hobbes so that he could be a bigger part of my life, then why wasn't he?" Calvin asked, confused. "All we ever did was fight."

"Well, that's the unfortunate part," Abby answered slowly. "By the time your Dad realized he needed to be a bigger part of your life, so many years had elapsed since he was a presence that you didn't want much to do with him. You seemed to think he was trying to control you, or trying to run your life. I suppose you just didn't know him well enough to know that wasn't what he was trying to do, and building trust with you was difficult for him. All he wanted was to be a bigger part of your life, but of course it didn't look like that to you. Why should it? He knew that he'd asked you to give up the biggest part of your childhood. For him."

"So it...it backfired?" Calvin whispered.

"You could say that. Why do you think one of his biggest regrets was about not spending time with you? If he'd done it when you were very young, you wouldn't have had so many problems later on with each other."

"So he...he blamed himself for...for our problems."

Abby laid her hand across his. "He did. But he loved you Calvin, as I said. Maybe it didn't always seem that way – you two are so different – but he would have done anything for you."

"Taking Hobbes away wasn't out of malice?"

"Why would he do anything malicious to you, Calvin? He loved you. He just didn't always know how to show it, like a lot of men his age."

"And he never got to tell me that."

"No. But I'm telling you."

Mother and son sat in silence at the kitchen table for what seemed like hours, each lost in their own thoughts, hands still clasped together tightly. A few tears cascaded down Abby's cheeks but Calvin remained in deep concentration, replaying the conversation in his head over and over, until he realized the core of what Abby had been trying to tell him:

There was no resentment on David's part. No attempt to make Calvin into something he wasn't. David's love for Calvin had always been unconditional, even if they didn't always get along. David's only crime was that he didn't know how to show it, and he had just done the best he could.

Like any father would.

"I'm going to go upstairs for a while, Mom," Calvin said quietly, disentangling himself from his mother's grip. She gave him a small smile. As he approached the staircase, Calvin was only marginally surprised to see Hobbes sitting on the third step, smiling warmly at Calvin. He patted Calvin's shoulder as the two friends made their way upstairs, and as Calvin shut the door to the bedroom slowly he began to feel the telltale signs of his eyes watering.

"It's a helluva thing finding out your parents are human, hm?" Hobbes said, ruffling Calvin's hair. "With their own regrets, their own lives, distinct from their children. Calvin, if your dad hadn't asked you to give me up, you would have never known how much he loved you."

"And I loved him," Calvin whispered, sinking down onto the bed.

The next thing he knew, the sobs for his father that had never come before suddenly overwhelmed him, and he cried without restraint.


	11. Chapter 11

Calvin's dreams drifted aimlessly through his subconscious as his body lay sprawled on the comforter, his chest rising and falling rhythmically. His eyes and cheeks slowly lost their red tint as the hours crept by in blissful sleep, and only a few salty remainders on his cheeks spoke of the tears he'd wept for his lost father that evening. Abby, too, had ventured to bed early, emotionally and physically exhausted by the toll of the day. At 3:06am, just as Calvin rolled over and threw his arm across a pillow, he was awoken by a fierce jabbing in his side.

"Wha – what the – Hobbes? Is that you?" he murmured groggily, swatting the offending jabs away.

"Wake up. I think something's happening at Susie's house," Hobbes whispered to him in the darkness.

"I'm the only one that can hear you, you know. You don't need to whisper," Calvin reminded Hobbes as he struggled into a sitting position, squinting in the streetlight that streamed in through the window. As his eyes adjusted on the house next door, he realized that bright red and blue lights were swirling in front of Susie's house. An ambulance.

Suddenly Calvin was wide awake.

"Jesus!" Calvin whispered fiercely as he bounded out of bed, hastily pulling on a pair of jeans and accidentally putting them on backwards. Growling in frustration, he tore them off and put them on the right way, only to look up at Hobbes holding a backpack in front of him.

"Take me with you. I want to know what's going on too," Hobbes insisted with an anxious expression.

"Why? Hobbes, I have to – "

"She needs both of us," Hobbes interrupted, pursing his lips in the scant light.

Calvin sighed and threw on a sweatshirt. "That's insane. Plus, it would look weird going over there in the middle of the night with a backpack – "

"She won't even notice. Promise."

Rather than waste precious time arguing, Calvin shrugged the backpack on with Hobbes inside and jogged quietly down the stairs, out to the foyer, and slipped outside. In the cool early-morning breeze, Calvin ran towards the Derkins' home just in time to see paramedics hurrying out of the house with someone on a stretcher. Calvin's heart stopped for a moment when he saw familiar brown hair crowning the head of the person on a stretcher, but released his breath as he saw Susie emerge from the house behind them, holding a hand to her heart and looking terrified. He rushed to Susie's side and she finally noticed him with some surprise.

"Calvin…?"

"I saw the lights. What's wrong?" Calvin asked, a hint of panic rising in his voice.

Susie turned back towards the ambulance, where they were carefully loading their passenger into the back. "Mom stopped breathing momentarily. I…I managed to resuscitate her, but her color is so bad, and I – I knew I needed some help, and – " Words failed her and tears brimmed in her eyes. Calvin slung an arm around her and held her close. "What if this is it, Calvin? What if it's now?"

"Susie, shh – "

"I'm not ready. I'm not ready for this yet," Susie whispered, leaning into Calvin, who enveloped her in an embrace.

"Come on. We can follow the ambulance in your car. I'll drive."

A moment later, Calvin found himself behind the wheel of Susie's late-model SUV, racing through the streets of their city following a screaming ambulance. Susie was quiet but a small, gentle sob escaped her every few minutes. Calvin didn't want to lie and tell her everything was going to be all right – people had spent the last two weeks telling him that, and things decidedly  _weren't_ all right – but he was unsure what to say. Instead he grabbed her left hand with his right, holding onto it and squeezing it gently whenever a sob shook her.

Within ten minutes, they arrived at the ER. They both jumped out of the car, Susie racing into the hospital in front of Calvin, who threw the backpack containing Hobbes over his shoulder and following her in. A moment later, Susie's mother was wheeled in and Susie disappeared behind a set of swinging doors, refusing to leave her mother's side. Calvin sighed and ran a hand through his hair, deciding right then and there that he would stay in the waiting room until he heard something from Susie. Since he had Susie's car, it wasn't as though he could go anywhere anyway. He slunk down into a chair in front of the TV in the waiting room, which was playing a fuzzy soap opera. He watched it mindlessly until his eyes closed and he fell into a deep sleep.

After what seemed like only a few seconds later, Calvin awoke to the feeling that someone was sitting next to him. He glanced up to see Susie sitting stiffly in the chair next to him, looking ahead, her face expressionless. Calvin sat up.

"What happened?" he asked, again grabbing her hand.

Susie didn't answer, move or make a sound. Instinctively, Calvin knew that Delia Derkins had not made it through the night. The sun, which would begin its ascent in the sky in just a few short minutes, would break the dawn of the first day that Susie was motherless. People would get out of bed, have breakfast, and go to work on this, a normal day for everyone except Susie and Calvin. He grasped her hand tightly.

"Oh Susie, I'm so sorry," he whispered to her. She began to shake and he put his arm around her, rubbing her shoulder. "I'm so sorry."

They sat in silence for close to an hour, with Susie's hand in Calvin's, watching other people come and go through the glass walls surrounding the empty waiting room they were in, watching the sunbeams of the new day bathe the emergency room in a rich, golden light.

"Thank you for staying," Susie said quietly to Calvin finally.

"No problem," he replied.

"It was the strangest thing," Susie said, sitting up slightly higher now, looking out over the hospital floor. "It…it was like she just let go. Like she had just decided that it was time, and that nothing was going to prevent her. She…she wasn't scared. In fact, she was…she was smiling. She just…let go."

"I'm glad it was peaceful," Calvin said in a sincere, soft voice. "After what she went through, she deserved that."

"What am I going to do now?" Susie whispered, mostly to herself.

"I asked myself the same thing right after Dad died," Calvin mentioned, looking over at Susie. "And I think I only just figured out that…you just keep going. You just take what you can from the experience, from the memories, and you just keep going. It's a mystery. All of it. Life doesn't work out how anyone plans it. Our lives didn't work out the way we thought they would, and neither did our parents'. That's what life is, I think. Making the most of the unexpected."

Susie nodded slowly. "Perhaps."

"I'm going to go call Mom. I'll be right back, Susie," Calvin said as he got up to go make a phone call outside. Not only did he need a ride back, but his mother would undoubtedly want to hear about Delia, seeing as how the two women were, if not friends, then at least neighbors for decades, and that counted for something.

Susie heaved a shaky sigh and put her head in her hands. She realized that she had prepared herself for this moment perhaps better than she thought she had. The anguish was crushing, and she felt as though her spirit had wilted away, but some small part of her felt a small sense of relief. Immediately she felt ashamed of herself. Shaking her head to clear it, she leaned back in the chair and shut her eyes. Often her own patients had mentioned that the feeling following the lingering death of a loved one was a sense of relief, a sense of their loved one finally being out of pain, a sense that life could begin again. It had felt like so long since Susie had had her own life she wasn't even exactly sure where to begin again. How does one pick their life back up after a two year absence?

"Don't suppose you want one?"

At the sound of an unfamiliar voice, Susie's eyes shot open; she had thought she was alone in the waiting room.

"I have two, and you're welcome to one."

Following the voice, Susie slowly turned her head until she realized she was face to face with a tiger. A real tiger. Sitting upright in the chair next to her, holding out a candy bar and grinning.

With a guttural yelp, Susie flung herself out of the chair towards the back wall of the otherwise empty room, wide eyes scanning the creature in front of her. The tiger looked almost disappointed.

"I suppose I could eat both of them, but don't you think that would be rude?" he asked, holding a Snickers bar out to her hopefully.

"Who – what – " she stammered, backing up towards the wall.

"It could be under better circumstances of course, but there's really never a  _bad_  time for a candy bar," Hobbes mused as he ate the bar in two bites, then stood up to face the still-terrified Susie. "I told Calvin you'd need both of us tonight, so here I am."

"H-Hobbes?"

"The one and only," he replied with a smile. He studied her quizzically for a moment, paw on his chin, then declared, "You're surprised to see me."

 _Yes, I'm just_ _slightly_ _surprised to see an anthropomorphic tiger speaking to me in a hospital waiting room,_ Susie thought to herself before shaking herself from as much of her shock as she could and answered, "I-I thought you were Calvin's hallucin – uh, Calvin's friend. Why am I seeing you?"

"You mean like how Calvin began to see me after his father died?" Hobbes asked pointedly in a steady tone. "Is that what you mean?"

Susie studied him closely for a moment, his cryptic question rattling around in her head. Susie  _had_ assumed that Calvin was seeing Hobbes again after the sudden death of David, but only because Hobbes had been a part of Calvin's childhood – surely a hallucination to deal with the trauma of death would be specific to the person, and why wouldn't it be Hobbes that Calvin would see again?

But that didn't answer the question of why Susie was seeing him.

"You see me because I'm real," Hobbes answered for her in a soft tone.

"You…you can't be real."

"I'm real to Calvin. Now I'm real to you. How much more real do I need to be? What is reality if it isn't what's staring you in the face?"

"But – But why?"

"Just like Calvin – he has to know the reason for everything too," Hobbes said, acting uninterested, and began to unwrap the second candy bar. "Make up a reason. Any reason. I'm make believe, right? So make up a reason. That'll suffice."

"I still don't understand why I can suddenly see you."

"Here," Hobbes said, ignoring her question and handing her half of the candy bar. He grinned, showing two rows of perfectly white, sharp teeth. "Just take it."

They both munched in silence for a moment, Susie not taking her eyes from the tiger, who was very obviously enjoying the candy, wearing a contented smile and chewing slowly. She hadn't had anything to eat in over twelve hours, and had to admit that despite the circumstances any food, even if it was just delicious empty calories, tasted good on her empty stomach. She immediately felt a little better.

"I don't want you to be afraid anymore, Susie," Hobbes' voice broke the hush that had fallen over them.

Susie looked up at him slowly. "Afraid?"

"Fear is the most powerful emotion in the world, Susie. It's also the most insidious." He brought himself up to his full height, which was nearly level with Susie's. "Tigers, naturally, prey on that emotion."

"Of…course."

Hobbes gave her another small smile. "I only wanted to tell you this: both you and Calvin have lived your adult lives in a state of quiet fear. Calvin was afraid of getting tied down somewhere. Afraid of someone knowing who he really was, afraid someone would call him out on his deepest insecurities and flaws. He paid for it through loneliness and anger. You were afraid of being less than perfect – also afraid of someone seeing your insecurities and flaws. You paid for it through always having to be the best, at any cost to yourself, even if it made you miserable, lonely and angry, just like Calvin. What I'm trying to say is that you and Calvin are more alike than you are different, even if it doesn't seem that way. I want you to understand that, even if I can't make him understand it. You two need each other. And he needs you a whole lot more than he needs me, even if he doesn't realize it yet," Hobbes spoke slowly, as if he wanted Susie to remember every syllable of every word. "And so I don't want you to be afraid anymore."

A phone ringing in the hall behind Susie startled her, and she turned to see if anyone else had seen what had been going on in the waiting room. When she turned back, Hobbes was again a simple cloth animal, sitting docilely on one of the plastic chairs, staring out at the world with two blank, button eyes. She stared at him incredulously for a few seconds until footsteps behind her could be heard.

"Susie, would you like a ride home?" Calvin's voice came from behind. "Mom's on her way to get me."

"I – I – I need to stay here and fill out some paperwork, I think," Susie spoke in a tone that didn't sound like her own. Calvin patted her on the shoulder.

"All right. Is there anything that needs to be done at your house? I can go over – "

"No, no, everything is – everything is fine."

Owing her aura of confusion to the morning's tribulations, Calvin nodded sympathetically. Susie looked at him as though she'd never seen him before, studying him with a furrowed brow and intense eyes, the likes of which slightly unnerved him. He frowned slightly in return. "Are you sure there's nothing I can do?"

"N-No…just don't forget your backpack, and…and Hobbes."

Calvin blushed slightly when he realized that Susie had dug Hobbes out of the old backpack he'd brought with him. "Oh, yeah. I guess I didn't realize he was in there when I grabbed it – " he lied.

"It's – don't worry about it," Susie stuttered, turning to leave the room. Calvin crossed the room and, after shoving Hobbes into the backpack, zipping it up, and slinging it over his shoulder, also turned to leave the room, only to have Susie cut off his path and give him a serious look. "Calvin are you – are you scared?"

"Of what?"

"Of – I don't know. Just – are you scared? Ever? I mean, do you ever think…" she sighed, shaking her head confusedly. "Do you ever think that you and I have lived our lives in a state of quiet fear?"

"Quiet fear?" Calvin asked, raising an eyebrow.

"And that – that perhaps something was missing from each of our lives? Maybe everyone is. Maybe we're all missing something that we had in childhood. We had some – some special _spark_ in childhood that we lost when we became adults. And maybe when we're missing that spark, when it isn't in our lives anymore, maybe that's when things get complicated, and maybe that's when we begin to – to fear, and overcompensate, and run away, and shut ourselves off from one another. And if we could just find that spark again, we could make ourselves whole, and fix what's broken inside all of us."

Before he could answer, Susie pulled Calvin in for a tight hug. She couldn't recall the last time she'd grabbed someone for touch, demanding affection, needing someone to put her cheek against, but Calvin did not resist. He was lost in his own head, unnerved by her words. It wasn't from confusion, it wasn't from the fear of being faced with someone else's deep mourning; no, it unnerved him that he knew  _exactly_ what she meant, even from a jumbled array of words and emotions seemingly unconnected. He knew of what spark she spoke, but he was as lost as she when it came to figuring out how to re-discover it.

"It'll all turn out fine," he heard himself say as his arms unconsciously found their way around her waist, pulling her closer. He closed his eyes and whispered to her, "Remember when we were kids, Susie? It always came down to just you and I, and our little world there in our neighborhood. And somehow, everything always turned out fine. We'll make it through together, just like we always have."

Two hours later back at home, Calvin sat down in front of his laptop, Hobbes at his side, and opened a word processing document. The empty page stared back at him. He shot a smile at Hobbes, who grinned back at him. For the first time in years, he knew exactly what to write, and how. The words in his head couldn't be stopped even if he tried.

But there was only one correct way to begin. Ten words crowned the top of the first page, and once Hobbes saw them, he ruffled Calvin's hair.

"That's exactly right, Calvin," he said in an agreeable tone. " _That_ is exactly right!"


	12. Chapter 12

The funeral was, everyone agreed, lovely, tasteful and exactly what Delia would have wanted.

The flowers were beautiful, resplendent in their blooms; the sun shone down on the mourners as they gathered at the graveside, birds singing sweetly in the trees above them; even the wind blew in the direction most beneficial for carrying the reedy voice of the priest at the graveside. The attendees stood in the brilliant sunshine as the coffin was lowered into the ground, some throwing a handful of dirt or a flower down into grave, the last earthly gesture of love given to the deceased. As the mourners drifted away, back down the hills to their cars, two men began to fill in the grave slowly and with purpose. Only one person stood nearby, underneath a tree, a Kleenex still held to her mouth. She stood there for close to an hour before making her way back towards a maroon sedan parked near the entrance, with a blond-haired man standing patiently beside the car. He gave her a small smile as she approached.

"Ready, Susie?" he asked gently, for once using her given name.

Susie nodded and got into the car, pulling the seatbelt across her and buckling it into place as the man got into the driver's seat. "Thanks for waiting, Calvin. And thanks for driving," she said in a near-whisper.

"No problem," he answered as he pulled back out onto the street, heading for their neighborhood. An awkward silence ensued; Calvin was unsure what needed to be said, if anything. Susie sat silently, staring out the window mechanically, as though her mind was somewhere far away.

"Did I do everything right?" Susie's voice was so uncharacteristically small and weak that it took a moment for it to register for Calvin.

"What do you mean?"

 _Did I get the right flowers? Was the priest one that Mother had liked and respected? What about the music played at the visitation – would Mom have chosen it if she'd been able to? Was it too staid and stuffy a ceremony, or just respectful? Did I invite everyone Mom would have wanted? Why didn't I_ _listen_ _to her more when she wanted to talk about this stuff? Why_ _wouldn't_ _she want to help plan her own funeral? What if – what if I had acted more quickly that night she – the night she got sick? Been fully awake when it happened? Would she still be here? What if we had tried some of those experimental treatments the doctor talked to us about? What if I could have convinced Mom to go for it – would she still be alive?_ Susie sighed and tucked her hands in her lap. "I just wanted to do everything right, that's all. Not knowing if I did…that's the hard part."

"Life isn't perfect, Derkins. You can spend all of your time trying to make it perfect but it never will be. Look, you did great for your mom. She couldn't have asked for anything better."

"I made a lot of mistakes. If I had it to do over again – "

"Wait, look. Don't do this to yourself." Calvin looked over at Susie. "It's over now. It's in the past. And you did  _fine,_ Derkins."

Susie sighed again. "It's different for you, Calvin. You're much more of a free spirit than I am – this stuff doesn't affect you the same way it affects me. If your Dad – "

"Let's not bring my dad into it," Calvin said as he pulled into Susie's driveway.

"All I'm saying is – "

"All you're trying to say is that you feel worse about your mother's death than I feel about my dad's death, is that right?" Calvin turned to Susie with a dark look playing on his features. "It's suddenly become the misery Olympics, eh? At least you got to say goodbye to your mother, Susie. Think about that. The last words I said to my Dad were in anger. That's how we left things. So don't act like you're the braver one here – "

"Calvin, that isn't what I'm saying at all!" Susie burst. "You're twisting my words. And there might be some truth in that, you know?" she shot back, throwing his own look back at him. "Because while you always ran away from the problems, I ran towards them. All of our lives it's been like that. I even became a psychiatrist so that I could help solve other people's problems. Meanwhile, you took a career path that practically demanded you never stay in one place very long, and to never get too close to your subjects. Do you realize that?"

"There's no virtue in doing something that your heart isn't in!" Calvin barked. "If you'd just take a fucking chance every now and then, Derkins, maybe you'd realize that!"

"Fine, I get it!" Susie declared, crossing her arms almost protectively in front of herself. "I'm not brave like you. Never was. Never took huge risks, never took leaps of faith, never just said 'to hell with it!' and went with my gut instead of my head. Calvin, that isn't who I am. I've never been that person and I never will be. I'm just…I'm just Susie Derkins." She exhaled slowly. "And I'm ok with that. I am who I am. Why isn't it enough just to be happy and satisfied with your life? You act like it's a crime to live a normal life."

"It's close enough," Calvin snapped back gruffly, lighting a cigarette aggressively. "Christ, Derkins, I bet you never even slept with a man unless it was scheduled six weeks in advance. Haven't you ever just wanted to let go and see what happens?"

"Calvin, my idea of letting go is having a second glass of wine. Your idea of a good time and my idea of a good time are two completely different things. You want to go out, get wild, end up in a different state with no idea how you got there? Fine, do it. If it's that damn important to you, do it. But you'll be doing it without me."

Calvin grasped the wheel tightly. "Look, we could sit here all day and argue about who is a better person – "

"It's a conversation I have no interest in, because it is pointless. We both are who we are. I've accepted it about you. I accepted it a long time ago, when I finally realized that I wasn't going to be a part of your life like I'd wanted to be." Susie froze momentarily. Having gotten carried away, that last part wasn't supposed to come out. She chanced a long glance at Calvin, who stared back at her equally as astonished.

"You  _what?"_ he practically whispered.

"Ignore it. Maybe I felt that way a long time ago. I was young and inexperienced. It doesn't matter now."

Everything was silent inside the car for a moment, save for the small sizzle sound coming from Calvin's cigarette. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, he whispered, "Then if it doesn't matter anymore, perhaps it's time for you to go home, Susie."

Without another word, Susie got out of the car, climbed the steps to the porch and entered her house, closing the door slowly behind her. Calvin sat in the car quietly for another moment before peeling out of her driveway belligerently and speeding up his own, leaving the car in the garage next to his mother's, who had long been home from the funeral, and stalked upstairs to the guest room.

He plopped down in a chair near the window facing the woods and sighed. He  _hated_ fighting with Susie and always had. Even when he felt that he'd been in the right, she was the only one on Earth who could still make him feel bad about it. It was like an impatient burning in the back of his head whenever he fought with her, leaving him angry, exhausted, and unable to think about anything else. And what the  _hell_ had she meant about how she used to want to be a part of his life? She's never told him that. Never said a word about it! How the hell was he supposed to have known that unless she'd told him?

And why the hell would she ever think he would have said no to that?

Growling slightly, Calvin got up and began to pace and only then noticed Hobbes sitting patiently on the bed, perhaps waiting for him to speak first.

"How the hell was I supposed to know?" Calvin spat by way of an introduction.

Nevertheless, as always, Hobbes seemed to know right where the conversational thread was. "I think the bigger question is, how the hell  _didn't_ you know?" he shot back, crossing his arms across his chest.

Calvin sat down again. "I don't know what you're talking about. You're the only one who was always there for me, Hobbes. Not Mom or Dad. Not Susie. I think I would have realized it if she was."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that." Hobbes flopped back down on the bed, an ornery look in his eye. "But what does it matter, right? You'll be out of here soon, off to God knows where, doing God knows what. None of this will matter, right?"

"Right," Calvin agreed, not looking at Hobbes, but his voice sounded weak and unsure. "That's right."

"You'll just pack your bag and find a new place to stay for a little while, and leave before things get tough again. Because some people are just wanderers, right? Don't need a home, don't need friends or family."

"I'm taking  _you_ along this time."

"What if that isn't what  _I_ want?"

Calvin shot him a look. "Hobbes, come on! We're best friends, right? Of  _course_ you're going with me!"

"How do I know you won't just leave me somewhere when I say something you don't like, hm?" Hobbes answered slowly, sitting up and giving Calvin a steady look. "You've done it to all your other friends. You're about to do it to Susie. How do I know you won't do it to me, too?"

Calvin stood up. "Look, it's not like I have anywhere to go at the moment anyway, at least not until this book is finished. But I'm not ever going to leave you behind, buddy. You never left me behind, so I'm never going to do it to you."

"Susie never left you behind," Hobbes said slowly. "But if you want to leave – "

"Maybe that isn't what I  _want_ anymore!"

Calvin's world seemed to stop spinning for a moment once he shouted this declaration. He momentarily forgot to breathe as the full realization of the truth of that statement hit him. He hadn't even consciously thought before speaking; it was one of those rare moments in a person's life when the pure, unbridled truth broke free from deep down inside, refusing to be ignored any longer. Time halted and Calvin felt as though he were relieving his whole life inside of a second. Fragments of memories suddenly fused, connected,  _meant_ something in the whole grand arc of his life, pieces fit together and slid into place as effortlessly as though it all had a purpose and always had.

He was three. It was raining outside. A fire in the fireplace, crackling warmly. Small colored blocks in towers around him. He kicked them, making them tumble to the floor. Susie, across from him, protesting loudly but nevertheless beginning to re-stack the blocks. Susie was there.

He was six. Looking out from behind a tree, a water balloon clutched in his hand, cold, wet and malleable. A perfect weapon in his childish mind. Susie jumping rope on the sidewalk nearby, singing happily.  _Sun fish, oh sun fish, show me all the colors of the sun._ Jumping out from behind the tree, water balloon clasped in hand, only to be mowed down from behind by a fifth grader on his bike, who laughed in a shrieking voice as he sped away. Blood on his arm and embarrassed tears in his eyes. Susie helped him up and didn't laugh. Susie was there.

He was twelve. A middle school dance, the kind with bad pop music and flat soda being served. Calvin's date stood him up. Pretending he didn't care, he stood in a shadow for much of the dance with a group of equally-ditched friends and made snide comments about how pointless and idiotic dances were, all the while making sure to mask any real humiliation he felt with clever comments. Susie approached, wanted to dance. Pretensions fell away. Calvin and Susie danced. She was there.

He was nineteen. Home for Christmas break. Susie was also home. Christmas night, a huge argument between Calvin and his father. Rather than stay indoors with the man, Calvin retreated to the deck outside, freezing in his thin shirt, refusing to go back in. Susie emerged from her house. Without a word handed him a sweater and a mug of hot chocolate, then turned around and went back inside. She didn't need to know why he was out freezing on the deck, only that he was. Susie was there.

Susie had been there for all of the years of his life that he cared to remember at all. Sometimes no words were spoken or needed. Sometimes they both felt as though they were breaking some social contract by crossing paths and not immediately turning away from each other. They didn't live their lives in the same way. Their paths had taken them far away from one another, but somehow, it was as though they always found themselves back in the same space when both of them needed a friend the most.

Hobbes hadn't been the only constant companion throughout his life. And, because Susie had always been there, that was perhaps her way of  _telling_ Calvin she wanted to be a part of her life. Calvin had never considered that.

Hobbes smiled at him from the bed.  _"Now_ you've got it, Calvin."

As if sprinting, Calvin tore out of the room, down the steps, and towards Susie's house. He entered without even ringing the doorbell, striding through the entryway as though it were his own house to find Susie at the kitchen sink washing some dishes. When she turned in surprise, he couldn't help but notice wet tears still on her cheeks. He gave her a small smile before wrapping her in a tight hug.

"I'm not going anywhere, I'm not going anywhere, I'm not going anywhere," he repeated again and again, as though it were a mantra. Perhaps it was.

"This is where I belong, and I'm not going anywhere."


	13. Chapter 13

**Epilogue**

_Calvin and Hobbes,_ a book of short stories written primarily for children, was published the next summer. It was an immediate hit with children, their parents, and the critics. The book also gained a huge audience with young adults and adults, an audience who hungered for even the smallest bit of whimsy in their own lives. Calvin Haddock's stories delivered that to them in abundance. Calvin spoke truthfully when he said that all of the stories were based on things that really happened, but of course, only the children believed him – the adults simply assumed it was some clever PR on the part of the author. It wasn't at all unusual for a worn stuffed tiger to sit proudly on a table next to Calvin as he did book signings and book readings; children, especially, wanted to hold him, talk to him, and beg him to come to life. They often asked if there were magic words that brought the tiger to life and Calvin had to be honest and say no – because not even he saw much of Hobbes, his Hobbes, anymore.

But Hobbes' spirit, or whatever it was, always seemed to linger.

Susie had never told Calvin that she had seen Hobbes that morning in the emergency room. It didn't seem right somehow; she almost felt as though she'd experienced something immensely special in that moment, and that it would somehow become less real if she spoke of it out loud. It was her secret, and hers alone.

During the weeks following the funeral of Susie's mother, Calvin stayed at his mother's house, finishing his book and growing closer to Susie every day. He felt, without a hesitation or moment of doubt, that being by Susie's side was where he needed to be, and it soon became the only place he could imagine being. His urge to flee vanished. His mother seemed somehow more tolerable to him. The memory of his father grew more dear. There began to be a very quiet peace growing within him, one that he'd searched for all of his life. Hobbes was still his best friend.

One morning several months later, a box arrived on Calvin's doorstep. Inside were the first proofs of his book. Opening it to the dedication page, Calvin had smiled and made his way over to Susie's house – where he spent an inordinate amount of time – rang the doorbell and presented Susie with the book. She smiled, opened the book, and caught sight of the ten-word dedication:

_This is dedicated to Susie Derkins, my own missing spark._

They were married early the next year.

Susie sold her mother's house, wishing to build her own life in her own home. With a three book contract to back them up, plus Susie's burgeoning new psychiatry practice located just within the city, the young couple were able to buy their own home, near their old neighborhood. Calvin's only stipulation was that the house backed up to His Woods, as Susie had always heard him refer to it, and this it did. Whenever she couldn't find him, she knew Calvin had taken off into the woods to be alone, to think, to imagine and dream. Susie's only stipulation was that the house had to have a widow's peak, which she could turn into her astronomical observatory. She brought her telescope to the new home, set it up, and began her beloved practice of late-night star gazing once again. She felt like she had a home – and a life – once more.

One thing both of them required of the new house was a room that could easily be converted into a nursery.

Hobbes slowly stopped coming to life, and Calvin couldn't decide whether he was heartbroken or whether he could simply accept that it was time to let go. Perhaps it could be both. He wasn't the same man that had come back after his father's funeral – an angry, confused man – but rather a husband, a writer, a friend, and soon-to-be father.

Calvin spent his days writing and answering mail from his readers. Some part of him was immensely proud that a generation of children were growing up with Hobbes, as he had, although they were doing it through text and pictures. The amazing thing about children, Calvin had decided, was that they didn't necessarily need a stuffed animal to make Hobbes real. He lived in their imaginations, and that was what really mattered. That, too, had helped ease the pain slightly when Calvin realized Hobbes might never come to life for him again. At the very least, Hobbes was coming alive in the imaginations of thousands of children, and therefore, Hobbes would never really be gone.

Eventually, Calvin even accepted Victor, his mother's friend, as someone who might be in all their lives, and that was all right. Things were changing –  _had_ changed – so much for Calvin that he couldn't begrudge his mother making a few changes as well. Change was natural, inevitable, and a fact of the universe – who was he to stand in the way?

With the day drawing nearer that would see Calvin and Susie's life changed forever with the first addition to their new family, Calvin one day found himself studying Hobbes closely in the writing studio. He'd always kept Hobbes in the writing studio, perhaps to draw a little inspiration for the stories that were becoming so well-loved, but now Calvin decided there was a better place for Hobbes to stay. Grabbing the worn tiger and taking him upstairs, Calvin opened the door to the nursery that he and Susie had put together. With a smile, Calvin placed Hobbes in the crib, turned out the light, and shut the door. "Just putting the finishing touches on things," he told Susie with a smile later that evening.

He knew it had been missing something.


End file.
